Are Greasy Snacks Smearing Your Phone? Japan Has Found a Solution Snack makers

Are Greasy Snacks Smearing Your
Phone? Japan Has Found a
Solution
Snack makers have developed treats that fussy
snackers can eat with one hand while trawling
smartphones with the other
George Nishiyama Feb. 3, 2019 1706 p.m. ET
Cleanliness-obsessed consumers are fed up with soiled fingers
gumming up smartphones, computer mice and other electronica. “I
used to eat with my hands and lick my fingers when I was small,“ said
Tomoki Yoshino, 19 years old. “But one day, my game controller got all
greasy, and it was really gross.”
Courtesy of the Japanese, thereʼs a solution that means people will no
longer have to choose between snacking and swiping. It involves
trawling online with one hand—and eating with the other.
Tokyo snack-maker Koike-ya Inc., has already snatched the name. The
companyʼs One Hand brand features a line of splintered potato chips
and other snacks that can be consumed like a bottled drink. Itʼs
marketed with a jumbo-size premise—“a new snack style humankind
has been waiting for.”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/are-greasy-snacks-smearing-your-…e-japan-has-found-a-solution-11549217201?mod=hp_featst_pos3 2/5/19, 7H56 AM
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A One Hand potato chip bag with spout opening. Photo: George Nishiyama
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The idea originated with the observation that customers like the mix of
potato chip crumbs and flavored powder left at the bottom of the bag.
Some eaters tip the chip bag into their mouths to dump the delectable
detritus.
“What we said is, ‘Why donʼt we make it easier for them to do that?ʼ ”
said Kohei Shimosaka, who led a five-member team of chip designers
to find the optimum configuration.
It took a year and arguments with those in charge of production. “We
would argue over a millimeter in setting the size of the opening,” Mr.
Shimosaka said.
The research and development finally cooked up a hand-held package
with an angled opening. The company doesnʼt release sales figures,
but the line has been successful enough to add a “super salt and nori
seaweed” flavor. More may be in the works, the company said.
“With One Hand, I can just take it and chug it,” said Keisuke Koresawa,
19, an aspiring professional videogamer. He estimated he spends
about half his day in front of a screen, gripping a mouse.
In the old days, he said, “Iʼd grab a potato chip, put it in my mouth and
then right away clean my fingers with a wet wipe.”
As with other digital disruptions, there are winners and losers.
One of Japanʼs largest snack-food makers, Morinaga & Co., said it was
killing off Choco Flake, a chocolate-covered corn flake snack sold
since 1967. Sales were starved by complaints about chocolate-
smeared screens.
Page 3 of 6

Sales are booming for Choco Ball, another Morinaga product, which
has a hard chocolate coating. “It doesnʼt melt,” said spokeswoman Rie
Terauchi.
Calbee Inc., Japanʼs top potato-chip maker by market share, gave
away a pair of plastic potato-chip tongs during a marketing campaign
in December.
“You can eat without getting your fingers dirty!” the package says. It
also has a drawing of a person with a smartphone in one hand and
tongs holding a chip in the other.
Snack tongs are now sold online, but many people are sticking with
chopsticks.
“I use chopsticks too,” confessed Ms. Terauchi, the Morinaga
spokeswoman. It isnʼt only about smudge-free smartphones. “Youʼre
often doing something else when youʼre eating a snack and you want
to keep your hand clean.”
Page 4 of 6

Chip tongs from Calbee Inc. Photo: Calbee Inc.
Morinaga is targeting elderly consumers with chocolate products that
have a high percentage of cacao, which is regarded as more healthy.
Yoshiko Sugiyama, 73, and her husband, Masayuki, 82, try to stay
away from snacks for health reasons, not to protect touch screens.
“Itʼs a strange world today where people eat snacks with chopsticks,”
Ms. Sugiyama said.
The Sugiyama family has, however, always loved oily foods, she said:
“If my husbandʼs hands get oily, he just licks them. I always scold him
for that.”
Hands in the U.S. get just as messy. Yet only M&Mʼs advertise that its
candy-coated chocolate “melts in your mouth, not in your hand,” a
slogan from the 1960s.
Students at the OCA Osaka College of Design and IT, one of the few
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schools in Japan offering professional training in esports, are among
those stressed out by grease-coated fingers.
They are often pinned down for long stretches by on-screen enemies.
The screen battles get you hungry, said Mr. Koresawa, the videogamer,
but “if the crumbs get stuck in the keyboard, it could be fatal.”
Snack makers says itʼs tough to turn the attention of young consumers
away from their screens. Some in the business pine for a past era,
when people would binge on junk food together.
“Kids used to gather around their favorite snack, chat with each other
and have a good time,” Koike-ya spokesman Naoya Yamaguchi said.
“But now, thatʼs all being done on the smartphone. They donʼt even
have to get together.”
—River Davis contributed to this article.
Write to George Nishiyama at george.nishiyama@wsj.com
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Are Greasy Snacks Smearing Your Phone? Japan Has Found a Solution Snack makers

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Are Greasy Snacks Smearing Your Phone? Japan Has Found a Solution Snack makers