Gum and Nuts: Real world product #1

Pepsi has been has been trying to obtain growth through development of new products. Coke has been doing the same with new flavors to Sprite, such a Sprite Remix, and Sprite Berry Clear Remix. This isn't anything new, since both Coke and Pepsi are always trying out new products, such as the short lived, "generation X" soda, OK. OK Soda was test marketed in Midwest in 94 (Generation X "neither feels highs nor lows" (or so said Lisa Simpson), so a soda that named "OK" would appeal to them, especially if the product packaging was swathed in faux ironic trappings)...You can read more about the short life of OK soda here
Back to products in this decade....Pepsi has been working on niche products for the last couple years, ever since their success with Mountain Dew: Code Red...which then spawned Mountain Dew Orange Live Wire (which tastes like fizzy pre gelatinous orange jello) and Mountain Dew Pitch Black (which is kind of grape tasting but more ominously, the colors breakdown in the foamy head and forms this blue, purple, and red foam scum). Following this trend, Pepsi has recently launched a limited edition "Pepsi Cola Holiday Spice", which is cryptically referred to as "spiced cola with other natural flavors" on the packaging. Apparently the holiday season is when cola drinkers are not getting enough spice in their life. The product's color is a very dark brown/red....when I poured it down my sink, it had the color of dried blood. I would describe the taste along these lines....Take 2 liter bottle of cola...pour out about 10% of it and replace it with water...then stick 12 atomic fireballs (hot cinnamon candies) into it and let them dissolve into it.

I won't claim that my taste buds are the base median for the US, but I'm pretty sure that not a lot of people were walking around saying, "hmmmm, I need some spice in my life....Yes, a spicy cola would do the trick."

One side of the 2 liter bottle states the following "Celebrate the season with family, friends and new Pepsi Holiday Spice. It's a festive blend of holiday spices and a great tasting Pepsi. But it's only around through the season, so this is one gift you'll want to open early. And often!" While I can easily see a meeting of Pepsi marketing folks chewing over various iterations of this text ('We gotta push frequency!'), I am rather mystified over the "holiday spices" aspect. I really didn't taste anything holiday-ish here, nor do I consider cinnamon to be very Christmas-ish. Granted calling it cinnamon cola would likely be too blunt but it would be much more truthful than "spice". When I bought this, the clerk asked if I knew what it tasted like, since she hadn't tried it myself. I professed my confusion over the word "spice" (my instant association to the word spice is "Old Bay"...now a crab flavored cola, there's a product idea!) and that I was buying it to try it. But I may buy another bottle just see the faces of my friends when they try it themselves.

I somehow suspect this product will be soon ending up in the flotsam and jetsam of global trade, like these cans of Dr. Pepper's Red Fusion I found at Don Quijote in Shinjuku a few weeks ago.

Kit Kat Smuggler-Yet another title to add to my resume?

Sometimes in your web browsing, you stumble over whole subcultures you were completely oblivious to...such as people with candy fixations in general and Kit Kat obsessions in specific.

While recently in Japan, I picked up a bag of lemon cheesecake flavored Kit Kat bars to see what they tasted like and to give my friends back home something interesting to try out. Apparently, Nestles Japan comes out with a new flavor each "season" (the box in the regular sized retail package says in English "Season's flavor") I recently saw a posting concerning the next flavor....Green Tea. On this posting, people were saying how much they enjoyed the lemon cheesecake flavor (I personally didn't care for it) and how they 'missed it now that it was gone' (I bought my package about six weeks ago).

This prompted me to look on ebay for kit kats and I was surprised to find 80 recent auctions for various flavors of kit kats...many of which have been released in other countries. Most of these auctions didn't have buyers, but if you need to get your hands on some "inside out" (chocolate wafers with white chocolate coating) kit kats, there is a place you can go to get that fix.

However, what caught my attention was the prices that the lemon and green tea kit kats were selling at...$10 for the lemon and $8.25 for the green tea. These bars sell for about $1.08 US in Japan. Not bad margins.