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Comment by dclowd9901 | Hacker News Reader

I know this is an unimportant thing, but why tf doesn’t kit kat just sell desirable flavors here themselves? What is the deal with the boner these companies have about withholding certain flavors in certain markets?

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KitKat in the USA is run by Hershey.

KitKat globally is run by Nestle.

That's one reason why.

The second is that in Japan Kit Kat sounds like "good luck" which is why they became popular, and two, why we see such regional variation.

(I have 4 Japanese flavors in my NYC fridge right now -- Sweet Potato, Adult Sweetness, Wheat, and Caramel Pudding (which you bake!)

I just ended up ordering some myself after finding out about these lol.

Another perk I've found about treats from overseas is they use actual sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup.

sugar instead of HFCS, cocoa butter instead of palm oil. There's definitely better quality in some markets and products than others

except they use palm oil in the caramel pudding recipe.

>"Ingredients: Chocolate (Sugar, Lactose, Vegetable Oil(palm)whole milk powder, cocoa butter), wheat flour, vegetable oil, lactose, sugar, caramel powder (skim milk, concentrated milk), yeast extract, cocoa powder, whole milk powder, cocoa mass, cocoa butter, emulsifier(lethal, sucrose fatty acid ester, glycerin fatty acid ester), sodium bicarbonate, flavor, yeast extract,(contains wheat, milk, soybeans)"

Yes, I wasn't referring specifically to japanese kitkats - I don't know what's in them, been a couple years. But the use of palm oil has become pretty pervasive and (maybe it's placebo effect) the flavour has declined.

That's pretty much true of most overseas candies and chocolates. Some of the best chocolates from Europe use cocoa butter and real sugar. Not Processed Cocoa Powder, HFCS, additives, colorings, preservatives, and then tempered with plastic.

Where did you order from?

Just search Japanese kitkat and you will find a bunch of online seller, and they are found on Amazon as well. I ordered from here:

https://community.gaijin.net/issues/p/warthunder/i/WpsnCaNDw...

For chocolate bars and stuff like KitKats I can't think that I've hardly ever seen them use HFCS instead of sugar. Maybe in ones with a more liquid component. Like, I'm pretty sure even the lowly standard Hershey bar uses sugar.

> Caramel Pudding (which you bake!)

Oh my god I have some of these I should have looked at the back of the package more closely!

I'm a cooking nerd so I have a torch which I find works better than the oven and toasting them does actually make them better!!

I just tried it with my last four and I REALLY wish I had found out sooner.

I hadn’t heard about this origin story of Japanese KitKat before and looked it up.

Kitto katsu! means "you will surely win" or "you will surely succeed".

So it is given as tokens for success in exams and the like.

Katsu for winning/succeeding also can be seen in Tonkatsu = pork cutlet (katsu is the Japanese "shortening" of cutlet), which is also offered as a success token.

> Adult Sweetness

I'm sorry, what?

It's the best one. Probably the best mass-market dark chocolate product out there.

It's a reduced sugar bitter dark chocolate kitkat that they know kids won't like. Hence "Otona No Amasa" or "sweetness for adults" marketing. They have a bunch of flavors under that subbrand.

Getting KitKat away at all cost from the Hershy eatable plastic company would one of my first moves as Emperor of the US&A

The manufacturers likely don't want to deal with additional SKUs and logistics for what is a low volume item in those regions. Allergies/ingredient disclosure might present challenges as well.

I don't think it's a boner over withholding flavors.

It's likely a profit boner. Margins on obscure flavors aren't projected to be high enough in whatever market, so they don't offer it. But in some other market, projections look good, so they offer it.

And something can be profitable for importers and not worth it for the company, additional tracking, stocking, etc.

Much simpler to have a few flavors shipped to millions of stores daily.

The untold thing here is that the KitKats are honestly not that good. The best ones are basically "huh, kinda intersting odd flavor", but especially in Europe I've only basically been met with disgust at the flavored kitkats.

The normal ones are fine, but they're not magic

They're good flavors, but not quite mass market compatible outside Japan I'd presume. I used to live in a city with a large japanese enclave and they were pretty well available from local asian grocery stores, though still 5 times as expensive as regular.

It certainly seems strange. But maybe the demand from a relatively few Japanophiles doesn't outweigh the adminstrative costs of maintaining a much larger number of SKUs (including regulatory requirements) and they'd send boxes of green tea chocolate to go out of date on shelves. I'd have thought a big corporate would have pretty scalable product range management but maybe it's just cheaper to hand that off to importers. Some calculation must presumably be involved.

Though I like to think the Nestlé/Hershey executives have been threatened by immaculately-suited Pocky-toting enforcers of the importers making profits on the novelty arbitrage.

Presumably in this case it has something to do with how Hershey owns the rights for Kit-Kat in the USA, but Nestle everywhere (at least as far as I know) else.

Japanese retail space (as in, the physical space available in the stores) favors small batches. US retail space favors economies of scale.

Do you know why this is? This seems to be true across a variety of products, including way more interesting fast food offerings.

It does seem like Japanese brands are more optimized for smaller size and number of batches. Could be due to accommodating logistics, media hype culture, denser population, omnipresent convenience stores, etc.

Because it's two different companies.

KitKat around the world is Nestle. KitKat in the US is under license to Hershey. Licensing is expensive.

It's Nestle in the UK, and they don't sell the Japanese bonus snacks here either.

License it to Mondelez and suddenly it will have lots of flavors you won't likely buy....

KitKat are already full of wafer so Mondelez wouldn't be motivated to 'put anything in the chocolate bar at all so long as it's not chocolate'. What's cheaper than wafer? I guess if they can make more of the inside wafer, so there's less chocolate coating?

Perhaps you can make wafer bubbly, so it's more air? Although it's cheaper to just put it in a plastic wrapper and fill the wrapper with nitrogen...

It's also hard to understand just how popular KitKats are in Japan and how their products and limited time offers cater uniquely to the Japanese audience.

KitKat has a lot of competition in the UK where caramels are way more popular than weird KK flavors.

If you go to the Japan Centre in London you can find various flavours of Japanese Kitkats.

I can't recommend anyone going to Japan Centre because you will spend a lot of money.

Last time I was there I spent about £100 on sweets that had tiny little train cars in them and the chocolate was terrible and I ate all of it.

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