Nov 13, 2009

Pepero Day!



11/11
November 11

It is similar to our February 14th in the states, however Pepero Day is a holiday invented with the sole purpose of selling and giving Pepero. It is held on Nov. 11 because 11/11 looks like 4 sticks of Pepero.

The holiday is observed mostly by young people and couples, who exchange Pepero sticks, other candies, and romantic gifts. Lotte denies starting the holiday and instead states that they noticed a bump in Pepero sales around November 11th and after continued popularity they decided to then encourage the holiday with special gift boxes and other promotions. Some consider it to be a contrived holiday and some teachers have encouraged children to exchange healthy snacks to help combat obesity.

According to one story, Pepero Day was started in 1994 by students at a girls' middle school in Busan, where they exchanged Pepero sticks as gifts to wish one another to grow "as tall and slender as a Pepero".

At school, most of the young students came with bags and bags of Pepero for the teachers, you can see my massive stack. Adam got some too, but the kids ate his before he even left the classroom.

What is Pepero you may ask...

Pepero (빼빼로) is a cookie stick, dipped in chocolate , manufactured by Lotte in South Korea since 1983. It was inspired by the Japanese product, Pocky.

As of 2007, it was sold in 10 different flavors:

  • Regular or Chocolate
  • Strawberry-flavored
  • Almond Chocolate
  • Nude (chocolate in the center)
  • Nude Lemon Cheese
  • Cocoa
  • Soft
  • Cheese
  • "Woman in White" and "Man in Black" are slightly more "classy" brands of Pepero, and both have chocolate cookie bits scattered throughout the chocolate dip,

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