Umaibō
Come On, the Representative of Japanese Dagashi!

Date：17, Apr, 2013
Investigated and Written by Misaka Youhei
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Do you know the word, Dagashi? Dagashi is a Japanese word which means cheap confectionery for kids although adults also have actually. Though it is so cheap, they are delicious.

In 1979, the king of Japanese dagashi was born and appeared at stores. It is Umaibō which means delicious stick in Japanese, a small corn snack.

It is said that Umaibō sells about 1,400,000 a day and about 4 hundred million a year. That is the representative of Japanese dagashi as it is difficult to find Japanese who never knows the small corn snack.

The selling agency is Yaokin Inc. established in Sumida-ku, Tokyo, Japan. You can see their green-colored office after going north for just a while from Kinshi Park. They have no manufacturing factories, same as Nintendo and Ito En. So Riska has manufactured Umaibō at their four factories all established in Ibaraki, Japan.

At the first time in 1979, they launched 3 types of flavor; sauce, curry and salami. Except some regional products, recently they produce about 20 types of flavor as potage, cheese, takoyaki and the like. By the way, they stopped curry-flavored snacks in 1980 and have produced the chicken curry-flavored since 2000.

You can get it for 10 yen regardless of the world situation. Then, the world conditions make Umaibō smaller and larger a little by case. It is interesting Umaibō tells us the situation, isn’t it?

Well, you would see a character on its package. They say it was born on Sep. 13, a Virgo, its blood type is A. However, they have not named it. Anyway, the nameless character and Umaibō wait for you at stores today again.