Hi-Chew – Kiwi

I don’t much care for summer. Maybe it’s because I was born in the winter, and that has some part to play in my disposition towards colder temperatures, but while most people enjoy the hot, warm, sweaty humid temperate of the summer season, I am more inclined towards the colder, cozier winters and autumns. When it comes to precipitation, I also love snow, but hate rain. I love snow a lot less when it begins accumulating to the point that I can’t get out of my house without snow pants, but I still love it more than the best case scenario of rain. I guess I rationalize it as being able to brush snow or shovel it away, while rain just makes you went and you can’t really do anything about it.

Sweaty balls and swamp ass aside, what I do enjoy about summer is the fruits and veggies. There are a lot of good stuff that is only available in the short window of summer, and golden kiwis happen to be one of them. Golden kiwis are a lot more expensive than your standard green kiwi, but they are also much sweeter and don’t really have that tartness. I’m not aware of a golden kiwi flavour from Hi-Chew (yet) but I am excited to try the regular kiwi flavour.

Standard stuff as usual, packaging is the standard stick, with the whimsical foil wrappers. You know, I’ve never really thought about what kiwis smell like. I guess now that I think about it, it has an acidic smell to it? Realistically, apart from that I don’t feel like natural kiwis have much of an aroma or odor to them. Don’t let those air fresheners fool you! This particular candy smells like green apple, if I’m being honest. So much so, that I had to do a double take on the label to make sure I didn’t pick up a stick of green apple.

In terms of flavour, it drives a fine line between green apple and kiwi. If you didn’t know that it was the kiwi flavour, I can see how you might confuse it for green apple. Heck, even the candy itself looks like green apple. Kiwis do have a distinct tartness to them though, and that’s the main thing to help differentiate this from the green apple flavour. Even if they start off the race at the same time, things take a turn and they end up on different tracks by the end of it. Two distinct, tart tracks. I’m not going to get too much into texture, since it’s virtually the same as every other Hi-Chew made in Japan. That is to say, awesome.

If this is your first or one of your first forays into Hi-Chews you might be included to believe that this is great and its all downhill from here. You would be wrong on the latter. Kiwi as a standalone flavour is not bad, but not that special either. That being said, it can be a good thing as it leaves room for improvement and means things can get better from here, which it probably will. Would I recommend purchasing this? Yes but only if it’s easy or cheap to obtain a stick. I had to pay a shiny penny to get it from Japan, and I would probably not do that again. It’s good but it doesn’t warrant the premium of a special order. That grape variety on the other hand….that’s a different story.