Flavor of the Now: Orange

Hey so has anyone ever noticed that Japanese snacks, especially the candies and drinks in convenience stores, follow a bit of a flavor pattern? Like one month, the different brands all release a bunch of x-flavored candies, and the next, almost in sync, you start seeing y-flavored candies and drinks?

(Which totally sidesteps the weirdness of products that must go through a lot of testing and development only to exist for like a month, which we see pretty often here. Examples: pink lemonade (last month; this month is coconut-pineapple) Mentos, yuzu Hi-Chew, lemon Coke.)

Anyway, as a heads-up to anyone paying attention, last month's flavor was peach, but we're currently slowly transitioning into orange and orange-associated flavors, which I guess includes the tiny 'kinkan' fruit, an olive-sized citrus fruit that the Japanese eat like grapes. Skin and all. Apparently the skin is quite sweet. Anyway.

Last month, we had peach-flavored I-lohas flavored water, peach-flavored gummies, and Kamu Kamu Peach, which are chewy, tart little candies.

If you're wandering around a combini in late March/early April 2016, you'll probably find (clockwise): orange "Fettucine" (more sour chewy things), Hi-Chew in 'bitter orange', a bag of orange-flavored energy jelly by Weider, then more Hi-Chew, kinkan-flavored, and your standard orange gummies. I also found some orange-flavored I-lohas water but I forgot to take a picture of it.