This Nestlé KitKat Ikinari Dango extends Nestlé’s Kitto Zutto Project, which began supporting people in disaster-affected regions after the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami with ten yen from the sale of each pack goes towards reconstruction in Kyūshū’s Kumamoto region. There are four different designs for the external packaging — coy, happy, hungry and happy Kumamon. Here, we have hungry Kumamon.
Kumamoto is famous for ikinari dango, which are palm-sized steamed sweet dumplings containing a disc of purple sweet potato that’s covered in anko and wrapped in a thin layer of mochi.
The images of Kumamon appear on the individually wrapped bars inside, with the addition of a version of him showing his hands in the air (bottom right). Our bag missed out on a hungry Kumamon inside the bag.
Each mini-bar is a cream colour and contained an azuki as well as 0.1% Kumamoto satsuma imo powder flavouring both the cream sandwiching the wafers and the enrobing white chocolate.
The KitKat has a vibrant aroma of red bean on opening that also came through on tasting. Starting mellow, the sweet nuttiness builds in the body as the flavour of the satsuma imo emerged to complement and deepen the sweet bean notes of the azuki. Overall, these KitKat capture the sweet, starchy and beany flavour of the ikinari dango remarkably well. We’ve enjoyed numerous red bean based KitKat, but this one stands out for being the first we’ve encountered that uses white, rather than milk or dark, chocolate.
This Nestlé KitKat Ikinari Dango contained 11 mini bars. It was produced in Japan and purchased in Kumamoto, Japan in 2019.