The idea seemed a good one: Go one better than bubble-gum cards and buried cereal treasures and offer high-quality collectible action figures, toy-model kits and other toys to sell snacks.
Japan's confectioners had visions of profits ballooning when they hit on this marketing strategy, hoping to attract not only kids but their parents, too.
Naoko Takayama was among the enthusiastic collectors lured by the gimmick.
PHOTO: REUTERS
The 34-year-old part-time worker has spent around US$9,000 in the past three years to collect 2,200 parakeets -- a thumb-sized plastic prize packed in Choco-Egg, an egg-shaped hollow chocolate made by unlisted confectioner Furuta Seika.
"Now my room is full of parakeets, just like [Alfred] Hitchcock's movie The Birds," Takayama said.
But the initial boom that created an adult snack market has taken an unforeseen turn, forcing confectioners like Ezaki Glico Co, among the industry's leaders, to rethink their strategies.
"The market, unpredictably, became only for avid adult collectors and we are finding it difficult to attract general shoppers," said Glico spokesman Tsuyoshi Kiriishi.
"We need to make products that appeal to general consumers to step ahead of our rivals in the competitive snack market," Kiriishi said.
The idea for the toy-and-snack boxes, called shokugan in Japanese, came from Fererro Japan Ltd, the Japanese unit of Italy's Fererro Group, which put a chocolate variation of the boxes on Japan's store shelves in 1998.
Japanese companies followed suit, tying up with popular plastic model maker Kaiyodo, to include toys from air planes and animals to "British Museum Collection" pieces at prices ranging from ?150 (YS$1.37) to about ?500, against an average price range of about ?100 to ?200 for general sweets.
Shokugan became a hit, especially among males in the their 30s and 40s, with the market growing to ?60 billion in 2002, up 40 percent from 1998, according to data from Glico.
But while collectors were pleased, general consumers grew disgruntled with the quality and volume of the boxes that included only a few pieces of tiny biscuits or candies.
Collectors also lost some of their enthusiasm as the market became inundated with various items, and makers' moves to release higher quality toys started lifting shokugan prices.
After peaking in 2002, the shokugan market shrunk to ?57 billion last year -- accounting for only 2.6 percent of the ?2.204 trillion snack market, excluding cakes -- and is expected to fall to ?55 billion this year as the market becomes more saturated and collectors spend less.
"I think the figures became a collectors' thing and I was totally into it ... but now that I've got all the ones I wanted, I'm more selective about spending," Takayama said.
Japan's confectioners have also seen profits melt as average spending by households on snacks fell to ?76,739 a year last year, down 0.4 percent from 2002 and off 1.1 percent from 2001.
The general snack market has also shrunk, dropping over three percent on a retail basis last year from ?2.274 trillion in 2000, as consumers have become more health-conscious, according to data by the All Nippon Kashi Association.
"It's a competitive market ... and shokugan is neither the solution nor a life-saver for companies," said Credit Suisse First Boston analyst Yukiko Oshima.
Glico says it is trying to beef up sales of growth products such as dental-friendly chewing gum, instead of pouring more money into shokugan.
The company posted a 2.9 percent rise in group net profit in the past business year with poor sales of its mainstay "Pocky" snacks offsetting bubble gum sales. The company said sales of shokugan accounted for about 5 percent of its total revenues.
Competition is also heating up.
Japan's largest toy maker, Bandai Co, is gearing up to increase its presence in the general snack business.
Bandai raised its stake in financially troubled Tohato Inc to 37.7 percent last year from 27.7 percent and is considering taking full control of Tohato within a few years to strengthen its snack business, said Yusuke Fukuda, general manager at Bandai's candy toy department.
The government is aiming to recruit 1,096 foreign English teachers and teaching assistants this year, the Ministry of Education said yesterday. The foreign teachers would work closely with elementary and junior-high instructors to create and teach courses, ministry official Tsai Yi-ching (蔡宜靜) said. Together, they would create an immersive language environment, helping to motivate students while enhancing the skills of local teachers, she said. The ministry has since 2021 been recruiting foreign teachers through the Taiwan Foreign English Teacher Program, which offers placement, salary, housing and other benefits to eligible foreign teachers. Two centers serving northern and southern Taiwan assist in recruiting and training
WIDE NET: Health officials said they are considering all possibilities, such as bongkrekic acid, while the city mayor said they have not ruled out the possibility of a malicious act of poisoning Two people who dined at a restaurant in Taipei’s Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 last week have died, while four are in intensive care, the Taipei Department of Health said yesterday. All of the outlets of Malaysian vegetarian restaurant franchise Polam Kopitiam have been ordered to close pending an investigation after 11 people became ill due to suspected food poisoning, city officials told a news conference in Taipei. The first fatality, a 39-year-old man who ate at the restaurant on Friday last week, died of kidney failure two days later at the city’s Mackay Memorial Hospital. A 66-year-old man who dined
‘CARRIER KILLERS’: The Tuo Chiang-class corvettes’ stealth capability means they have a radar cross-section as small as the size of a fishing boat, an analyst said President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday presided over a ceremony at Yilan County’s Suao Harbor (蘇澳港), where the navy took delivery of two indigenous Tuo Chiang-class corvettes. The corvettes, An Chiang (安江) and Wan Chiang (萬江), along with the introduction of the coast guard’s third and fourth 4,000-tonne cutters earlier this month, are a testament to Taiwan’s shipbuilding capability and signify the nation’s resolve to defend democracy and freedom, Tsai said. The vessels are also the last two of six Tuo Chiang-class corvettes ordered from Lungteh Shipbuilding Co (龍德造船) by the navy, Tsai said. The first Tuo Chiang-class vessel delivered was Ta Chiang (塔江)
EYE ON STRAIT: The US spending bill ‘doubles security cooperation funding for Taiwan,’ while also seeking to counter the influence of China US President Joe Biden on Saturday signed into law a US$1.2 trillion spending package that includes US$300 million in foreign military financing to Taiwan, as well as funding for Taipei-Washington cooperative projects. The US Congress early on Saturday overwhelmingly passed the Further Consolidated Appropriations Act 2024 to avoid a partial shutdown and fund the government through September for a fiscal year that began six months ago. Under the package, the Defense Appropriations Act would provide a US$27 billion increase from the previous fiscal year to fund “critical national defense efforts, including countering the PRC [People’s Republic of China],” according to a summary