In Japan, where new varieties of familiar products appear and disappear with the seasons, consumers are often left feeling bereft when their favorite flavor suddenly becomes unavailable. "What happened to that delicious Milk Tea KitKat?" shoppers moan as they scour konbini shelves for that elusive treat. But a couple of campaigns from Nestle and Nissin have brought a small degree of relief to those suffering from this first world problem.

Both companies launched grand election campaigns this year, allowing customers to vote for the reintroduction of their favorite flavor. Nissin kicked things off earlier this year with its Cup Noodle election campaign. Visitors to the election website were able to vote for their favorite retro flavor out of a possible 73 options. The winning product, with 133,144 votes was tempura soba, and will be available in stores from January next year.

Not to be outdone, Nestle, the maker of KitKat, has also launched an almost identical campaign in which voters online get to choose their favorite discontinued variety of the chocolately snack. However, KitKat’s campaign is a little more limited in scope: the candidates include only 19 varieties. And one of my friends did grumble that their favorite Cola Lemon KitKat didn't make the list.