Why everyone’s talking about... KitKats
Why is everyone talking about KitKats?
So many reasons! They’re introducing a vegan version and a zebra bar with both dark and white chocolate – and recently launched one made from cacao nibs, aged for 180 days in whisky barrels from the Isle of Islay.
Yum! Where can I get it?
Only Japan, sadly, where KitKats are insanely popular. Sales boomed after students began exchanging them as good-luck gifts at exam time as the brand name evokes the phrase ‘kitto katsu’ (‘you will surely win’). The craze became so widespread the Japanese postal service accepted wrappers as pre-paid envelopes for the chocolates inside. Myriad flavours and colours followed, starting with a pink strawberry bar in 2000. The 300 variations since have included purple sweet potato, wasabi, soy sauce, baked potato and ‘European cheese’. In 2017, a cough-sweet flavour was sold to football fans cheering themselves hoarse. A matcha green tea bar was exported back to the UK while John Lewis briefly sold gourmet British flavours such as Eton Mess and dandelion and burdock.
So KitKat’s a great British invention?
Absolutely. It was created at Rowntree’s York chocolate factory after a worker suggested a ‘bar that a man could take to work in his pack-up’.
The four-finger bar was launched in 1935 as Rowntree’s Chocolate Crisp, but was soon renamed, and a two-finger version introduced. Current brand owner Nestlé has failed in legal bids to trademark the bar’s shape. KitKat has used the same ‘Have a break…’ ad slogan since 1957, and annual sales of £110million make it the UK’s fifth-bestselling chocolate bar – or No1 in Parliament, a 2015 Freedom of Information request revealed. Gordon Brown was a big fan, scoffing three a day while PM – and his MP colleague Hazel Blears claimed £2.50 on expenses for one from a hotel minibar.
Any other KitKat lovers?
How about the man who wrote to his local newspaper, the Falkirk Herald, this month to sing the praises of a favourite dish: lentil soup with KitKat croutons? Yuk!