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The Great Japan Potato-Chip Crisis: Panic Buying, $12 Bags (bloomberg.com)
Demand for potato chips has surged in Japan this week, with products on offer for 6 times their retail price online after Japanese snack company Calbee halted the sale of some of its most popular chip brands. From a report: Calbee's pizza-flavored chips were going for about 1,250 yen ($12) on Yahoo Japan Corp.'s auction website Friday. One bag usually sells for less than 200 yen. Photos of near-empty shelves at their local supermarkets were trending on Twitter. The crunch came after Calbee warned on Monday that it will temporarily halt the sale of 15 types of potato chips due to a bad crop in Hokkaido, a key potato-producing region. The northern island was hit by a record number of typhoons last year. Calbee, which has a market value of 507.9 billion yen and is 20 percent-owned by PepsiCo Inc., has a 73 percent market share of potato chips. Potato chips are a big deal in Japan, a country also known for its senbei rice crackers and Pocky sticks. Calbee's potato-snack products were the most and second-most popular snacks in a TV Asahi poll of 10,000 people and 13 confectionery makers last year, and the subject of a primetime show that lasted more than two hours.
Reminds me of the butter crisis in Norway a few years ago, the neighboring country Sweden would have Swedes smuggle butter into Norway and actually sell these for as much as 1.000 NOK (roughly 116 USD) per half kilo. Don't believe it? Well - check out the sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... , http://gawker.com/5869463/norw...
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
As long as cheeto and dew trees are safe, we don't care.
love is just extroverted narcissism
Ah, those were the days. Barely lived through that one. =)
The story here, for those fortunate enough to have missed it.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Well, you see, they could, if Japanese agricultural protectionism didn't get in the way. But it does and so they can't.
Japan has protective trade policies (i.e. no imports) on many food items it considers strategically vital. Potato is one of them.
I agree with this for the most part, you don't wanna be at the mercy of your neighbors when fecal matter starts flying. Only the very shortsighted or stupid think all nations will get along singing kumbaya all the time. Ability to keep your population alive when international relations go south is pretty damn vital.
and the Asian market across the street from me has no potato chips. Also, the Safeway a couple of blocks from me doesn't either. Seems like the problem is spreading.
I live in Sweden and bought chips two(?) days ago but ate the last of it today.
So it seem to have spread here too since I'm all out of chips.
Now you may consider this false news because who doesn't eat up all of the content in the bag in one go? Sounds false right?
Well. I also bought one bar of dark chocolate and two with darkish chocolate and mint-crisps and five bags of licorice of which four was "salt" as we call it and "EWW! Why would you eat that?!" as Americans would likely call it.
So yeah.. I didn't finished it all in one day.
Kim Il Sung invented the potato chip while leading guerilla war units to fight the Japanese occupiers.
Amazingly, it turns out it was a genius long term plan to bring the morale of imperialist and puppet forces down.
I live in San Francisco. Numerous Asian grocery stores carry these chips near me. They are much less fattening than normal American chips, like Lays. I eat Calbee chips quite frequently, and I'm a white dude, and they have flavors most Americans wouldn't go near (Sriracha Squid flavored, wasabi and so on). I wouldn't say I'd freak out if my local Asian store stopped carrying them or started charging 12$ a bag, but it's still disappointing.
I'd rather be a fatass American than a poor worthless European piece of trash.
At least the poor European has real social services to fall on -- the fatass american won't be able to afford healthcare insurance for his heart bypass.
Go eat something healthy for a change. There's no need for this kind of idiocy. We're more civilized in Europe and would never sink to this level.
Oh yeah? What about FRENCH fries!? They are just as calorie laden as potato chips and not nearly as tasty. Why did the French invent them if they are so civilized?
I'm so glad they we call them FREEDOM FRIES now.
It's just like when the Hostess union destroyed the company.
Looks more like management continually screwed up by not moving the company with the times. Maybe better labour relations from the beginning would have helped a lot.