Yes, Mariko, there is a Special Black Mont Blanc.
Across Japan there various regions that are said to produce food with a quality or certain flair compared to the rest of the country. And then, there are some foods that don’t even exist outside of certain regions.
One example of this is Black Mont Blanc. This bilingually oxymoronic ice cream bar can be found in virtually every store’s freezer case in the southern island of Kyushu but is non-existent elsewhere.
However, now, Lawson convenience stores are selling Black Mont Blanc bars all over the country. Our Kyushu-born reporter Mariko Ohanabatake picked one up for 173 yen (US$1.13) to try it out.
This one she bought in Tokyo was a little more expensive than the standard retail price of 140 yen back home, but this was no ordinary Black Mont Blanc. It was literally a “Special Black Mont Blanc.”
She was excited to find out what made it special and hurried home to try it. However, it was the same chocolate-coated bar of vanilla ice cream encrusted with cookie crumbs she remembered. No premium Häagen-Dazs ice cream or anything of the sort.
I was good but in the exact same way it’s always been good, so Mariko checked the website of the bar’s maker Takeshita Confectionary to find out what makes these bars “Special.”
“The Special Black Mont Blanc is larger than the Black Mont Blanc in response to customer feedback expressing a desire to eat more of it.
It also features packaging suitable for a regional ice cream.”
Fair enough, but just making something bigger might constitute a “Jumbo” or even possibly a “Deluxe” version. Calling it “Special” just for that feels like a stretch. Mariko cut a cross-section and determined that it was indeed bigger, but she couldn’t help feeling a little bummed that that was all there was to it.
However, as she ate her Special Black Mont Blanc, she noticed something strange on the stick. Something was written on it…
After finishing the whole thing, she was informed by her stick that she had won a 500-yen Tosho Card, a type of gift card that works at most bookstores and some other shops.
She looked back on the package and found that with each Special Black Mont Blanc, there was a chance to win a 1000-yen Quo prepaid card or a 500-yen Tosho Card.
Not only that, Mariko had bought two bars, and the next day when she pulled the other one from her freezer and ate it, she won yet another 500-yen Tosho Card!
Suddenly, her 350-yen purchase had paid off in 1,000 yen worth of prepaid cards and two tasty ice cream bars to boot. This truly was special.
A lot of candy in Japan uses this kind of “atari” (“hit” or “win”) system. Gari Gari-kun is famous for it too, but notoriously difficult to find a winner. Regular Black Mont Blanc bars work on a point system wherein each stick has a random point value and a total of 120 points can be exchanged for a free bar. However, they have been notoriously generous about this, with many people getting nearly 120 points in a single stick.
It would seem that this same spirit of generosity can be found in the Special Black Mont Blanc but in an even more special way. Much like she did when she was a child, Mariko showed off her winning sticks to her coworker and fellow Kyushu native Takashi Harada.
So, Special Black Mont Blanc turned out to be special after all. This is likely a limited-time item at Lawson, but with Takeshita Confectionary having opened a factory in the Kanto area, we may finally see regular Black Mont Blanc everywhere in Japan before long.
Photos ©SoraNews24
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[ Read in Japanese ]