Not only are fruit and vegetables seasonal, so are KitKats, cakes, Haagen Daz ice cream, various chips / crisps, general candies / lollies, cup-o-soup mixes and various other foods too. This doesn’t include the numerous fast-food chains that also sell Limited Edition products based on the time of the year.

All are branded as “Limited Edition”.

They are rarely repeated so it is important to stock up on any that you particularly enjoy. I do this under the guise of filling out my earthquake preparation kit. It currently has quite a few Premium Mint KitKats. They will expire shortly so I’ll have to restock…

Some Limited Editions are not only seasonal, they are regional, with KitKat being a great example. Different areas of Japan sell flavours unique to their area. This is going beyond wasabi KitKats and green tea KitKats and the sakura ones for spring. These are super-gourmet KitKats!

This does make it a lot easier when visiting another area to know which food to bring back for my team (it is customary to return to work after some time away with food from wherever you’ve been) but it has me wondering how difficult it would be to come up with all these ideas.

KitKat have launched over 200 flavours since 2000. Who thinks of these? How do they decide which will work? How do I join their taste-testing group?

Haagen Daz appear to release about six Limited Edition flavours a year (or is a season – I haven’t been here long enough yet to work out which is correct), give or take. Purple Sweet Potato being one for this season and a Green Tea Fondue Crispy Sandwich to round out the range.

While I’ve always known Japan has some unique foods, I hadn’t realized that “Limited Edition Food” is used to market Japan in Hong Kong and is being used to entice people for a food tasting holiday. I was oblivious because the advertising appears in Chinese language newspapers and I’m even worse at reading that than I am at Japanese.

Is it possible to saturate the market in Limited Edition products?

I live in the right place to find the answer.

The answer right now is “no”.

* Thanks to Portishead for the title to this post.