Quote:
Originally Posted by Nagoyankee
You could have gotten much better-tasting stuff from Japan for the same price! 
The Japanese who buy those food-taste candies don't buy them for their taste. Rather, they buy them for a conversation topic with their friends and families. Let's face it. We can get hot, fresh, yummy gyoza anywhere anytime, so we don't need the Gyoza drops for a substitute. Some people just buy these drops for an offbeat sounenir. This is why many of these candies are area-restricted to appeal to the tourists looking for strange souvenirs.
Gyoza - Tochigi Prefecture only
Beer - City of Sapporo only
Corn - Hokkaido only
These would be sold all over Japan if they actually were any good. In a sense, they have to taste terrible to exist. The manufactures here "play" once in a while and we consumers play right along since these things only cost a few hundred yen at the most. No harm done. The worse it tastes, the bigger "topic" it makes. Not sure this concept will ever be understood in your country.
This thread so reminded me of the Cucumber Pepsi from a couple of years ago. Japanese knew from the beginning that it was just a game Pepsi wanted to play for a few weeks. The North Americans living in Japan, however, took the Cucumber Pepsi seriously and made lots of Youtube videos about it, telling everyone how terrible it tasted. What they never understood was that it HAD TO taste terrible for Pepsi to get consumers talking about it and uttering the name "Pepsi". |
I was in Japan during the "Cucumber Pepsi" epidemic, and unfortunately I was one of the idiots who took it seriously.
^^^^ comic I made, documenting the phenomenon... featuring my friend Randall [Ran-chan]