Konbini Kinyoubi: Lemonade Coffee, Lychee Water, and Other Strange Combinations

Welcome to Konbini Kinyoubi, where every Friday (Kinyoubi) we visit our local convenience store (Konbini) and buy something delicious. This post contains affiliate links. For more information, please read our affiliate disclosure.

Sometimes we go to the konbini with a specific plan for what we’re going to review that week, like when we try a new store or it’s a special anniversary. Other times, we just wander around and grab stuff. Sometimes it’s delicious, and sometimes it’s disgusting. Our track record is mixed.

Here’s what we got this week:

Full disclosure: this is not everything we bought. I had to work last Saturday despite being very tired, so we went to 7-11 to get hard candy, not intending to create a blog post from it since we’ve already covered 7-11 hard candy once (quick review: it was good because hard candy is good). But then we each got a drink. And then we saw two new varieties of Black Thunder. Suddenly, a new post was born.

I always like getting coffee from the konbini, especially the slightly sweet kind that comes in a bottle. I’ve tried just about every variety under the sun, so when there’s a new one, it spurs my interest. I immediately noticed a bottle containing a product that sounded like a strange combination: Cold Brew Coffee & Lemonade.

From UCC, a well-known maker of bottled coffee drinks, this appeared to be just what it sounded like. They mixed cold brew and lemonade together, much as Americans like to mix iced tea and lemonade. I was suspicious of how that would work, and what the proportions would be, as well as curious as to the consistency, since most lemonade in non-American countries is sparkling. Only thing to do was give it a taste.

Pray you never get any closer to it than this.

Gaaaaaaaahhhhhh! It was DISGUSTING!!!

First of all, there we no bubbles - just flat coffee and flat lemonade. Second, the taste was HORRIFIC MURDERDEATH.

You know what two things don’t go together? Cold brew coffee and lemonade. Those two things do not go together.

It’s like they brought out the worst in each other, accentuating the negative qualities of each, similar to when two of your friends decide to date and become the worst couple in the world. I honestly don’t know if they started with quality cold brew and quality lemonade - maybe they did, and this is just a science experiment gone wrong, or maybe they had some old cold brew and some old lemonade they couldn’t sell and mixed them together to try and cover up the rank taste, with no success.

What baffled our minds was that people approved this. Folks in product development and marketing thought this was a good idea, moved it up the ranks, and it was signed off on. Madness.

It tasted like when you first try hard alcohol, that overwhelming vomit-fire taste, and you say to yourself, "Oh, I'm never gonna grow up to need some of that every night in order to sleep.”

It was truly awful. I tried a few more sips, thinking I could finish the bottle, then eventually gave up and just put it in the refrigerator where it still resides.

The next day, we were FaceTiming with my mom and Eriko told her about our konbini experience the day before. I said, “Oh, let’s show her the cold brew and lemonade.” When Eriko held it up in front of the computer, my mom said, “Oh, I didn’t think you were about to show me one bottle.” She was right. Cold brew and lemonade should not be one bottle.

Actually, since it’s still there, let’s take it out and have a farewell sip right now…

WHY?? WHY DID YOU MAKE THIS? IT’S LIKE COUGH SYRUP MIXED WITH PORT LEFT IN A MOLDY CHEESE WHEEL OVERNIGHT.

Truly an abomination. Do not buy this thing.

Eriko had better luck with her drink.

This is lychee water. If you don’t know what a lychee is, it’s the fruit that’s on the carton there. There are a lot of lychee-flavored things in the world. As young men, my friends and I used to go to happy hour at a place called Kiichi in West Hollywood that had lychee sake. It’s great for subtle sweet flavoring.

I had to grill Eriko on exactly what lychee water was - is this like coconut water, where it’s like the juice of a lychee, or is this just water with a splash of lychee in it? It’s apparently the latter, really just water with 1% lychee juice. And you know what? That’s the correct proportion.

From the smell, I thought it would be too strong, but it has a light touch. You get the refreshing hydration of water, and just enough lychee to taste good but not leave your mouth sticky with flavor. I usually don’t enjoy flavored waters, but this one was very good. We finished the entire thing over the course of the afternoon, and though I wouldn’t rush out to try it again, Eriko really liked it, and I imagine we’ll try it again some other time. Definitely recommend.

That left just one more important part of our konbini haul: the Black Thunders.

Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.

If you read this blog, then you know we love Black Thunder, and go out of our way to try any new flavors we happen to find. This week, we found TWO kinds we hadn’t tried before, so we had to snack on both of them.

Up first is “Black Sunday,” which is flavored like an ice cream sundae. Right away, its difference from normal BT is apparent, due to the light color and vast amount of krispidoodles that can be seen from above.

It was sweet, but not too sweet, and had a great crunch from the rice puffs. The consistency was fairly light and didn’t carry too much artificial flavoring like some of the alternative BT flavors do. I really liked it, but its main issue wasn’t what what it was, but what it wasn’t: a Black Thunder. If you have the choice between Black Thunder and Black Sunday, it’s really not a choice at all. This is a good candy bar, but it’s no BT.

For our final treat, we tried Black Thunder 200%, in miniature bite form. And when they say “200%,” they really mean that.

Yowza, were these dense. They were almost tough to bite through there was so much packed into them. It was like they’d taken a full-size Black Thunder and smushed the entire thing down into a tiny cube.

Now, since Black Thunder is delicious, these bites were similarly delicious. Texture-wise, they were tougher to eat because of the density, and the flavor was overpowering, but as far as alternate BT flavors go, these are definitely one of my favorites.

It’s always tough to say whether I’d recommend new Black Thunder flavors, because am I comparing them to other candy bars, or to the original? If you’ve never tried Black Thunder before, remedy this issue immediately because it’s one of the greatest gifts ever bestowed upon man. But if you’re a completist and want to try them all like we do, I’d say these are two of the better spinoffs.

Overall, we had one good drink, one disgusting drink, and two delicious candy bars. Oh, and I used the hard candy to help me stay awake and finish my work. 15/10 thanks 7-11 couldn’t have done it without you.