There’s more to this iced treat than first meets the eye.

Japanese convenience stores are filled with weird and wonderful products, but sometimes the importance of these products might pass you by if you’re not a local. That’s the case with Family Mart’s new Frozen Choco Banana, which is pretty self-explanatory for people seeing it for the first time, but for locals this is a total game changer.

Our reporter Daiki Nishimoto is quick to convey the importance of the humble “choco banana”, describing it as “the product that faces the greatest disparity between demand and supply in Japan“. That’s a bold claim to make, especially when rice is the most expensive it’s ever been, but that’s how passionate he is about chocolate-covered bananas. He says that many people in Japan first encounter the choco banana at festival stalls, falling under the spell of its irresistible flavour. Yet as people grow older, they realize just how rare it is to find choco bananas for sale anywhere else, leaving them with a banana-shaped hole in their hearts as they walk the Earth in search of the sweet from their childhoods.

Daiki is not alone in his love for the childhood nostalgia of chocolate-covered bananas, so when Family Mart stepped in to fill the void with a new frozen version, Daiki raced in to try it on the 22 April release date.

After sprinting home and tearing into the package, Daiki could’ve cried tears of joy at seeing the familiar sight of his beloved choco banana, speared with a stick for holding, as it usually is, but glistening with icy fragments on its surface.

Convenience stores have sold chocolate-covered banana ice creams in the past, but Daiki isn’t aware of any that have actually created a frozen version like this, which looks just like a choco banana you’d buy at a festival stall. In fact, when this product was test-marketed in limited regions in June 2024, it quickly became a hot topic on social media and sold out instantly, with people raving about the look and taste of it.

▼ Daiki says its sell-out status is proof of the public’s intense longing for the choco banana.

If the taste lives up to the hype of replicating the choco bananas from everyone’s childhoods as much as reported, Daiki says it may just herald the dawn of a new era for the sweet for younger generations. With high hopes for this new dawn, he let it sit out of the freezer for about 20 minutes to soften up a little, and when he took a bite, he realised that had been the right move, as the chocolate coating still had a satisfying snap, but the banana inside was just the right softness, pairing with the chocolate in such a perfect way that it made his heart skip a beat.

Of course, it wasn’t exactly the same as a fresh, unfrozen banana, as it had taken on a slight sherbet-like texture due to the freezing process, but the way that it captured the fresh, fruity flavour was nothing short of astonishing. In some bites, the banana practically melted in his mouth.

Family Mart uses its own “Famimaru” brand highland-grown bananas for this product, which gives it a rich, high-quality sweetness that adds to the satisfaction. It brought back memories for Daiki of how, as a child, he could eat choco bananas endlessly without ever getting bored of them.

The frozen version is so good he may just fall back into these eating habits again, and he highly recommends trying them, so you can get a taste of the intense childhood nostalgia that the choco banana holds for locals.

Available at Family Mart stores nationwide, except for Miyazaki, Kagoshima, and Okinawa prefectures, this product presents a major step forward in correcting the imbalance between supply and demand for choco bananas, but it’s only available for a limited time, priced at 298 yen (US$2.08).

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