A Japanese Candy Tasted Like Nothing. Why Do People Miss It?

A flavorless sweet appeared briefly in Japanese comfort shops and should by no means be bought once more. We think about this information.

It had no taste by design. Even its title, Flavorless (?) Sweet — sure, with a query mark — instructed extra of an absence than a presence. However individuals in Japan are nonetheless speaking about it, and in some circumstances lacking it. That has given the product a type of mystical attract.

The sweet was manufactured by Kanro, one in all Japan’s main sweet firms, and check marketed in some shops final fall by Lawson, a comfort retailer chain. It appeared once more for just a few weeks this summer time in a lot of the firm’s 14,600 shops.

Seven items value the equal of $1.31, together with tax. They got here in a easy silver package deal emblazoned with a bird-shaped character.

The sweet was developed for individuals who wished to moisten mouths that had gone dry from all-day masks carrying however with out a sugar rush, stated Osamu Oouchi, 42, a member of Lawson’s product growth workforce.

Public masks carrying became ubiquitous in Japan throughout the coronavirus pandemic, although it was not legally required. When the federal government tips eased in Could, many individuals stopped masking. However Lawson stated that it rereleased Flavorless (?) Sweet anyway in July as a result of it had carried out exceptionally effectively in a buyer vote on the corporate’s high merchandise.

“It turned a dialog matter,” Mr. Oouchi stated, including that the sweet was like a “marble in your mouth that regularly melts and disappears.”

This summer time, social media customers in Japan have been reflecting on what the “style of nothingness” tastes like, if something. One likened the mouth really feel to “ice that’s not chilly.”

In a phone interview, Kanako Kinoshita, 46, described how consuming the sweet had spurred a sort of metaphysical self-reflection.

“I requested myself: Why do you pay for this product?” stated Ms. Kinoshita, who runs a vegetable pancake restaurant in Hiroshima and works as an administrator at a radio station. “The reply is possibly to place myself right into a state of ‘nothingness.’”

The sweet was unconventional within the sense that it “broke a preconception that candies style candy,” stated Hisahiro Kawabe, the highest editor at a confectionary business publication in Tokyo.

Mr. Kawabe stated Kanro had beforehand pushed the boundaries of sweet with different merchandise, together with one whose main ingredient was soy sauce, and that Flavorless (?) Sweet underscored the challenges for an business the place gross sales have been flat lately.

“Younger individuals don’t wish to hold meals of their mouths for a very long time: They’d fairly chew gummies, tablets or mints,” he stated. “So firms try to provide you with concepts to draw younger shoppers.”

Lawson’s market analysis signifies that the sweet was particularly common with youngsters, ladies of their 20s and pregnant ladies affected by morning illness, stated Mr. Oouchi, the product developer.

In Japan, comfort shops are sometimes held up as nationwide symbols of effectivity and customer support. That status is partly a perform of shops’ monumental choices and speedy tempo of product turnover. A brand new sweet product will sometimes be on cabinets for less than three or 4 weeks — a tempo that displays a ceaseless quest for novelty.

Ken Mochimaru, a spokesman for Lawson, stated that reviving and redistributing Flavorless (?) Sweet would create scheduling conflicts. However he added that he hoped prospects who missed it will discover satisfaction in different merchandise.

At a Lawson comfort retailer in Tokyo the opposite day, there have been numerous sweet flavors to select from, together with apple, combined fruit, peach and soda, and so forth. However there was one overarching similarity: All of them tasted like one thing.