Meiji Apollo Strawberry Chocolate — Triangles, 46g

Little triangular pieces with a sweet-tart strawberry top sitting on a slightly bitter milk-chocolate base. Meiji has made them the same shape, with the same two layers, since 1969, and there's a game in the box: some boxes contain one piece shaped like a star instead of a triangle. It's a children's-shelf staple in Japan rather than a grown-up chocolate, and it's the cheapest thing on our chocolate shelf.

アポロ, the name on the box, if you're matching it to something you saw in Japan.

What you're getting

• Taste: Strawberry on top, milk chocolate underneath, and the two are meant to be noticed separately. Plenty of people roll a piece around their mouth to split the layers apart before eating them; there's a playground superstition that if the strawberry comes away cleanly, the day will go well.
• The lucky star: Meiji mixes a star-shaped piece into some boxes. It has done since Apollo's 50th birthday in 2019 and has never announced an end. What Meiji does not publish is how often, so anyone quoting you odds is guessing. Some people have found several; others have never seen one.
• Worth knowing what it is: there is more vegetable fat in it than cocoa, and the ingredients list says so in that order. The pink layer gets its flavour from real strawberry powder, plus added colour and flavouring. There's no juice or fruit pulp in it.
• How big it actually is: 46 g. These little Japanese cartons photograph much larger than they are; it's a handful of small pieces, not a block.
• In summer: It will arrive soft. That matters more here than on a solid bar, because a partial melt runs the two layers together and the shape is most of the point.
• Allergens: Contains milk and soy. Read the pack's own label before you rely on ours.

A few things worth knowing if you're matching a memory. The pink layer is strawberry chocolate, not white chocolate: several overseas shops describe it wrongly. This is the small 46 g box, not the twelve-bag family pack that's often sold under the same name. And if you remember it as 48 g, you're right. Meiji dropped it to 46 g. Searching "Apollo candy" in English will find you an unrelated Korean sweet, so the box to look for says meiji and アポロ.

One box is a small handful of pieces: the sort of thing that rides along with a bigger order rather than travelling on its own.