Meiji Meltykiss Strawberry Japanese Chocolate — 53g

Soft-centred cubes of strawberry milk chocolate, rolled all over in cocoa powder: closer to a soft truffle than to a block of chocolate. They soften the moment they are in your mouth, which is what the whole product is built around. The strawberry is sweet and properly tart, and it leads: if you would rather the cocoa was in charge, the plain Meltykiss is the one to get.

Meltykiss is Meiji's winter range, and it is an everyday supermarket chocolate in Japan rather than a luxury one. The boxes land around October and are gone by February, in Japan, them turning up is one of the small signals that winter has started. This is the strawberry.

メルティーキッスフルーティー濃いちご: the pale lilac box with the big pink snowflake. Worth matching against the one you remember, because Meiji redesigns the pack every season.

What you're getting

• The melt: the centre gives way rather than snapping, and it is gone quickly.
• Cocoa powder on the outside: dusted over the whole cube, so it reads matte and dark rather than glossy.
• Ecuadorian cacao: that is the cacao Meiji uses for this flavour, and for the matcha box too; only the plain one is made with Dominican.
• The catch: the strawberry leads hard. It is the thing people disagree about, for most it is the whole appeal, for a minority the chocolate gets lost behind it.
• Allergens: Meiji declares milk, soy and apple, and nothing else on Japan's 28-item allergen list. Japan's list is not Australia's, so a blank there is not a free-from answer for gluten or for nuts.
• Allergens, and it runs the other way too: Australia's chart has no apple category, so apple cannot appear in an allergen box here. Check the ingredients, not the chart; ours is the fuller list.

The winter boxes all look alike. This is the strawberry, and the others are plain chocolate, matcha and milk tea. It is a small 53 g box, which is simply the size Meiji makes it. The big mixed bags you will see elsewhere work out cheaper per gram, so if that is what you are weighing up, buy one of those: this box is the single flavour. The powder on the outside is cocoa, not icing sugar. If you are wondering whether it is the same thing as Royce' nama chocolate: Meiji does not sell it as one, and we have not found a straight comparison in either language. Take warm weather seriously: Meiji says to keep it below 23 °C, and it is not sold in Japan through summer at all, on a hot day it will arrive soft, and nothing in the packaging prevents that. Opinion is split on the fridge, too: some people chill it, some say cold ruins the melt, and Meiji gives no chilling instruction either way.