2/26/2013

Meiji Karl Cheese / 明治 カール チーズ味

Karl (カール) is considered as a first Japanese snack and it's been sold since July 25, 1968. 
More 10 years before Curl had launched, Calbee sold "Kappa Ebisen" in 1955 and many think Calbee's Kappa Ebisen should be the first snack since there's no clear definition of snack.
Main ingredient of Karl is corns and this non-fried snack.
Its first flavors were cheese and chicken soup.
"Light and crispy corn snack.
Cheese flavored puffy and crunchy texture.
Cheese is used in the dough and it gives rich flavor.
It's so good that it makes you smile."

The curly shape isn't made intentionally but while it's under development, it happened to be this shape; curled dough was dropped off from a nozzle, and developers used this shape since it's unique.
Product name "Karl" is from the shape "curl" however due to the registration of trademark, it's spelled as "Karl" instead.

When they created TV commercials, main focus was children so that they used an animated character which was a boy. 
Interestingly, a side character, an old guy with a straw hat (underneath, he has a few hair), towel around his neck, and beard around the mouth, in a farm work clothes became more famous and so many customers asked who the old guy was.
Then, Meiji decided to use the old guy as a main character, named Karl Ojisan (Uncle Karl).

This year, they celebrate its 45th anniversary and the package has a little note on the front and back side.
You can see "C" shaped snacks inside of the package.
They use aluminum package since 1988, and before that, they'd used transparent/plastic package which wasn't sealed well and resulted in receiving a lot of complains.
Close look.
I heard there's Karl Ojisan's faced piece randomly so I looked through each piece carefully but I had no luck with the package I bought.
Nutrition
Calories: 385kcal
Protein: 5.0g
Fat: 20.9g
Carbohydrate: 44.1g
Natrium: 370mg
(Sodium chloride equivalent: 0.9g)

Since I was a kid, Karl was popular and most of the supermarket or conbini had.
And sometimes I crave this long-selling cheese flavor.

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