Popular Japanese Candy Items You Must Try in 2022!

Japan is a country that is rich in traditions and culture. There are many people like you, who love Japanese food and drink, but do you know where to start when it comes to the best Japanese sweets? Many of these loved Japanese snacks are popular all over the world, known for their taste, unique and eye-catching, colorful packaging. Japanese candy products also use some exceptionally innovative techniques. If you go to a store that specializes in Japanese products, you could be faced with some tough choices in the candy aisle.

Over the years, Japanese sweets have become popular in countless regions all over the world, while their unique taste is simply unmatched in the Western market. If you are looking for delicious Japanese treats, some of our favorites include: Pocky, Hi-Chew fruit flavor candy, Kit Kat chocolate bars, hard candies, do-it-yourself gummy candy kits and Ramune Japanese marble sodas.

At Redstone Foods, we have many of these popular Japanese flavors, including candies, fruity gummies, matcha, chocolate bars and some innovative, DIY products that encourage you to make your own creations! So if you’re new to the world of these deliciously addictive Japanese sweet snacks, here are some of the most popular ones you absolutely should try at some point in your life!

Let’s explore some of the best Japanese candies

If there's one thing Japan has good a good sense of nostalgia for, it's candy. Many of the successful Japanese candy manufacturers have impressive marketing skills, drawing endless new varieties of the most famous brands.

Many new products fail in the Japanese market, simply because it has become more difficult to impress their consumers. In this regard, a few select sweets have taken a place in the hearts and minds of the people of Japan to become classic symbols of their country’s unique pop culture. Below are just some of the Japanese sweets that fall into this category.

Japan’s distinctive fruity candies

Fruity-flavored candy is all the rage in Japan, and they have been for decades. Ultimately, the brand Hi-Chew is the most popular of these types of candies in Japan, beyond a doubt! Hi-Chew has a smooth, chewy texture, much like salt water taffy, but it was originally invented to be more like a type of chewing gum that would eventually dissolve in your mouth.

These strawberry-flavored chews called “Chewlets” were created in 1956, partially because chewing gum was considered somewhat disrespectful in Japanese culture. A survey revealed that over 47% of the population there almost never chews gum. These fruit chews are great because you never have to take them out of your mouth to dispose of them!

Over the years Hi-Chew has been made in over 170 different flavors! While many of these have never been available in stores in the United States, we have all of Hi-Chew’s best flavors available in wholesale quantities on our website.

These flavors include all the classics like grape, strawberry, mango, green apple, banana and watermelon. Some of their more unique and exotic flavors include acai, kiwi, rainbow sherbet and dragon fruit. They even come in soda pop flavors like Ramune and cola.

Another incredibly popular brand of Japanese fruity candy is Kasugai gummy candy. These are not your typical gummy! Kasugai fruit gummies are made with real fruit juice and come individually-wrapped, so they’re the perfect companion to any social outing. These come in classic Japanese flavors like kiwi, peach, mango, grape, watermelon and lychee.

Ridiculously Fun Gummy Candy From Japan

Speaking of gummy candy, Japan has some of the craziest and most fun gummies around! Kracie’s Popin Cookin are fun DIY gummy candy kits, where you can make all sorts of amazing creations. These are the perfect sweet treat to foster creativity in children and adults alike!

With these kits, you can create your very own gummy concoction, with shapes like ramen noodles, waffles, hamburgers, sushi, bento box, donuts and birthday cakes. This is one of the few times you’ll encourage your kids to actually play with their food!

Japanese Chocolates

As we’ve discussed before, everyone loves chocolate and in Japan, it’s no different. There are many fun and unique chocolate snacks from Japan. Pocky is a cookie stick that is covered in milk chocolate. These sweets are extremely popular with school children in the Land of the Rising Sun.

With a slew of creative flavors like matcha green tea, cookies and cream, chocolate banana, strawberry and almond crunch there’s a variety of flavors that you would be honored to enjoy!

Another unique way the Japanese culture enjoys chocolate treats is with mochi, which are tiny rice balls filled with a creamy custard. Many of these come in fruity flavors, like mango, strawberry, or lemon, but we think the Cacao Mochi Chocolate from family foods is a definite must-try for a real Japanese flavor experience!

Japanese Kit Kats

Another product that deserves mentioning is the seemingly endless flavor varieties with Japanese Kit Kats. We could actually write an entire article about the importance and influence Kit Kat holds in Japanese culture and customs. But we’ll have to save that for a later date.

Over the last several decades, Japan has essentially become the Kit Kat capital of the world. Kit Kat sells more of their chocolate bars there, than in any other country on Earth. They even have special limited-edition flavors there than you simply cannot get anywhere else.

There are perhaps several reasons for their success in the Japanese marketplace. One is that the name, Kit Kat is pronounced “kitto katto” in Japan and a similar phrase “kitto katsu” which translates roughly to “I am bound to win”.

In the 1990’s, Nestle’s genius marketing team in Japan used this semantic similarity to advertise to children that Kit Kat bars were good luck before you took an exam in school. This helped bring a whole new superstition into the culture and the candy has been immensely popular there ever since!

Ramune Japanese Marble Sodas

To fully get the Japanese flavor experience, you’ll need something to wash-down these candies with, and what better than an ice-cold, cool, refreshing soda. Ramune Japanese marble sodas are easily the most popular native soda brand in Japan.

These come in a very unique “Codd-neck” glass bottle that is sealed with a marble to lock-in the carbonation. Every time someone opens one, there is quite a bit of excitement. You have to push down on the top of the bottle to release the marble, which makes a distinct pop(!) sound.

These unique bottles can be kind of confusing for first-timers to the Ramune soda experience. There’s instructions printed on the top of the bottle, but those were equally confusing. Luckily, the Chicago Tribune made a fun video to show you how to actually open these bottles. We promise you it’s the weirdest bottle you may ever open!

Ramune comes in a variety of different flavors like blueberry, yuzu citrus, grape, lychee, melon, orange, peach, strawberry and original. Pop one of these open to truly experience something new from Japanese culture.

We hope you have enjoyed our look at some of the best candy and soda products from Japan. All of these products are available to purchase wholesale on our website.

Redstone Foods is the premier wholesale distributor of candy, snack, soda and novelty energy drink products in the United States. We feature many fun, and tasty international candy products from all across the globe. And better yet, our customer service is unrivaled in the industry. We would love to gain the opportunity to serve you.

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