Soda flavors take over convenience stores for summer

Mango and watermelon were strong contenders, but as the flood of summer-themed convenience store products begins to peak soda is the obvious winner in this season’s flavor war.

The item that first caught our attention was Suntory’s Ice Cream Soda carbonated beverage scheduled for a July 1st release. The package has a trendy retro soda fountain look and the drink promises a refreshing blend of ice cream melted in soda.

Next we came across press releases for Tohato’s cream soda and coffee float flavored caramel corn snack, the latest flavor in the popular series (available from June 16th) and Cadbury Japan’s soda flavored Bubblicious chewing gum (available from July 17th).

So we headed to the convenience store to see what else we could find and discovered that soda was indeed the most common flavor in all major convenience stores!

For example Akagi’s new Vanilla Soda Bar Melon Chocolate (exclusive to Family Mart) and Gari Gari Kun Soda popcicles (actually a perennial favorite that has been around for awhile).

Also Dippin’ Dots Cool Soda flavor (available since April) and fizzy drink Calpis bottle ice.

And Glico’s new Papico White Sour bottle ice, Tuwish’s ramune and cola flavored gummy candies, and UHA Mikakuto’s similarly flavored G Fresh soda and cola gummies.

Besides the obvious refreshing qualities of soda on a hot summer day, soda flavored products channel the retro appeal of ramune, the old-fashioned lemon-lime glass-bottled carbonated drink. Not all of these products are new, some of them, like the bottle ices, are decades old but are experiencing a revival following the general retro boom that is still going strong.