Rilakkuma did the shopping this week for Conbini Monday, and I can warn you now, he went wild!!
Trendy Magazine, in their latest July 2009 edition, are highlighting a number of products that have become hit products in the first half of the year. One of these is a caramel candy made by Kabaya. I couldn’t find any at the local ampm, but I did see a row of empty shelves. Either they were getting ready for new stock or they had all sold out.
The product was put out as a test product with Lawson initially and sold out immediately. It then was distributed to convenience stores throughout Japan in April and supermarkets in May where it continued to be a top seller. Looks like it is a hard to get item.
Not wanting to miss out, other manufacturers have started to sell their brand of caramel sweets. The packaging of this brand was a bit dull, but the caramel were very soft. The map of Hokkaido in the top right is always a good sign for quality.
These caramel sweets are all from Hokkaido and have different tastes including butter caramel, potato caramel, red bean paste, azuki, caramel and corn caramel. You can see the empty shelf below where I presume some other caramel product might have been.
Leaving the caramel aside, I found these two great ideas from McVities which is selling its Digestive Biscuit range in convenience stores in small bite size packets. The two flavors here are much more interesting than the traditional type of biscuit. We have Mango & Orange, which tasted really good, and Green Tea Biscuits, which were not quite as good.
Calpis always seems to have out some sort of variation on its main product. At the moment they are selling this season limited, Pineapple soft candy, as well as the plain calpis candy. There are quite a variety of Calpis drinks out at the moment as well with some Premium Calpis blends.
I don’t know who came up with the following product idea, but it is certainly different. UHA Mikakuto is selling these products called Ninja meshi. These hard gumi are said to be part of the Ninja diet, with flavors of ume and mango. The candy are rock hard so be careful. Not sure whether they got permission to use a likeness of the Miyazaki Governor Higashikokubara, but it certainly looks real.
The Governor of Miyazaki has been willing to lend his name and likeness to many products from the region to try and promote produce from Miyazaki.
Here is a link to UHA Mikakuto for this product on their Japanese language web site
Here is a link to their English language site for some other products.
See you next Conbini Monday. Don’t forget you can chat about Conbini Monday on Twitter at any time with the hash tag (#) #conbinimonday and tweet direct with me at @shibuya246
Rilakkuma! I love Conbini Mondays… yummmm
Thanks for the comments 🙂
Never had green tea biscuits before. Did Rilakkuma like them? You have some pretty interesting flavors for candy and gum.
they were passable, but preferred the Orange and Mango :p
looks really tasty, especially the green tea biscuits :D. I was wondering about the strange name of Sapporo Märchen – Fresh Caramel candys because Märchen in German means fairy tale ^_^
there is a lot of use of French, German, English and other languages. It could be a mixed up translation or there could be a story behind it. I will try and find out.
Ohayo gozaimasu Shibuya,
Yea another conbini monday!:D
Rilakkuma really did go wild! Did he go over his budget? or did you just let him pick out whatever he wanted ,seeing it's been awhile since he's been out?
A great variety of snacks to choose from as always. It's funny gummis are supposed to be soft aren't they? so what's with the hard ones? They probably tasted great.
Don't let him eat it all he has to share,lol The orange&mango bisciut looks really yummy. I'm waitng to see if pres Obama will let his likeness be put on any product, so far just comic books.
Well say hi to Rilakkuma for me.
Till next time ,
Ja mata ne.
I wish I could say he stuck to budget, but the cost went over YEN 1,000. Never go shopping when Rilakkuma has an empty stomach 🙂
I have that same problem,always seem to go without eating first.everything always looks so good. then when I get home i say what was I thinking?? Funny how our subconcious mind can get us in trouble,lol.Hope Rilakkuma doesn't get a tummy ache.
Have a great week.:)
Hey Shibuya, if I come to Japan, will you take me to a tour of the conbinis? I might go wild like Rilakkuma and pick anything and everything! lol
No problem. You me and Rilakkuma. 😉
konnichiwa! Thanks for following me on Twitter and you're kind you sent me a personal message.
haha, I sometimes go wild at conbini too!
I used to be enthusiastic with collecting small toy with a bottle of drink.
I have many lipton's OMAKEs. 🙂
You're welcome. some of the omake gifts are better than the actual products. thanks 😀