| TOKYO, Mar. 30 – On March 29, the National Federation of Agricultural Cooperative Associations (ZEN-NOH) announced the winners of the nationwide poll to choose the country’s most popular Nippon Yell brand gummy candies made of local fruits. The crown winner of the first-ever gummy contest was “Black King Gummy from Yamanashi Prefecture.” In addition to standard people’s favorites such as Shine Muscat and Beni Madonna citrus, some fruits that are rarely available fresh in the market also ranked high in the list of the most popular local fruit gummy products. ZEN-NOH set up a special site to introduce 47 candidates made of signature fruits from all 47 prefectures of Japan. The site was open for the vote from February 19 through March 10 and collected 37,303 votes. The winner, Black King Gummy from Yamanashi Prefecture, won 2,096 votes. Black King is a black grape distributed fresh in the market in small quantities. “People like them a lot probably because they are rare products in the market,” a person from the sales development department of ZEN-NOH said. “Nyuzen Jambo Suika (watermelon) Gymmy from Toyama Prefecture” won the second spot (1,907 votes), and “Shine Muscat Gummy from Nagano Prefecture” the third (1,865 votes). ZEN-NOH plans to sell a new gummy product made of the juice of the fruits used in the top seven winners.  Yamanashi Black King Gummy won the crown in the All-Japan Nippon-Yell Gummy election. (Photo by ZEN-NOH) |