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habanero

New super spicy snack coming to Japan is fine for your stomach, but not for your eyes

The snack aisle of Japan’s convenience stores is a fiercely competitive marketplace, and just about every week sees the release of some new flavor of candy or potato chip trying to steal the spotlight from its rivals. But while many of these pretenders to the throne of snack foods are only on sale for a few months or even weeks, the spicy potato rings called Bokun Habanero have been on sale without hiatus for over a decade.

Still, you have to keep evolving in order to stay ahead, and next month will see the release of a new Bokun Habanero that’s 10 times hotter than the normal version.

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“RAAA”: The most appropriate name for a habanero pepper-flavored 34 percent alcohol drink

Hombo Shuzo is a prestigious distiller founded in 1872 in Kagoshima Prefecture, the birthplace of one of Japan’s most beloved drinks: shochu. The company had won several medals at last year’s International Wine and Spirit Competition including a gold medal for their exquisitely smooth one-year-old Arawaza Sakurajima.

And to celebrate, this distinguished group has released perhaps their classiest drink to date. It’s an imo shochu (sweet potato shochu) with a thick bouquet of one of the world’s spiciest peppers, the habanero, and it’s name is Satsuma No Haoh RAAA.

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We play Russian roulette with new spicy “Tyrant Habanero” snacks

Russian roulette is the ultimate in high-stakes games of chance. A revolver with five empty chambers and one loaded, there is no more intense or insane way to spend a Saturday night. However, since none of our minds were warped from being a POW in the Vietnam War we haven’t had the pleasure of partaking in such a game.

But now, we might enjoy the culinary version with Tohato’s Russian Tyrant Habanero snack cups. The premise is that one out of every six corn chips in the cup is seasoned with enough habanero spice to take your face off. In the interests of science and comedy, we wrangled our weakest-tongued reporter to try some out and see if it truly is the rush its makers describe.

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