Is Japan Entering a “Black-and-White Snack Era”? Kellogg’s Moved Before Calbee — And Now I Want to Collect Them
A strange but fascinating topic suddenly started trending in Japanese news recently.
Food giant Calbee announced that because of supply shortages linked to tensions in the Middle East — especially shortages of packaging materials and printing ink — some of its products would gradually switch from colorful packaging to black-and-white designs starting May 25.2026.
Potato chips, shrimp snacks, cereal… around 14 products are reportedly affected for now, and more companies may follow later.
The moment I read the news, I imagined something oddly surreal:
Rows of black-and-white snack bags lining convenience store shelves, as if the entire snack aisle had entered some kind of “post-apocalyptic minimalist mode.”
Honestly, snack food depends heavily on colorful packaging.
Bright yellows, reds, and oranges practically scream:
“Buy me!”
So if everything suddenly turns black and white…
It almost feels like the potato chips lose calories before you even open the bag.
Still, I have to admit:
Calbee handled the situation brilliantly from a marketing perspective.
What started as a frustrating supply-chain problem somehow transformed into a kind of “limited edition moment of history.”
And as someone who genuinely likes potato chips, I could already feel my collector instinct waking up.
I was seriously thinking:
“When the black-and-white versions finally launch, I should probably buy a couple just to keep.”
It feels strangely historical.
But then something even funnier happened.
May 25 was still days away.
Yet on the night of May 18, while casually walking through a supermarket in Tokyo, I suddenly spotted a black-and-white cereal package sitting quietly on the shelf.
Not from Calbee.
From Kellogg’s.
Right there beside the regular Calbee products.
I honestly froze for two seconds.
Calbee spent all this effort turning “black-and-white packaging” into a news topic…
…and Kellogg’s somehow launched first.
That was unexpected.
It felt a bit like this:
Company A finishes a big presentation saying, “The future belongs to electric vehicles.”
Then Company B casually parks one outside your house the next morning.
The business world is funny sometimes.
While one company builds momentum, another quietly arrives first and captures consumer attention — and maybe consumer wallets too.
What’s even more interesting is how quickly public perception changed.
Originally, black-and-white packaging sounded like a symbol of shortage, crisis, or cost-cutting.
But after all the media coverage, it suddenly started feeling more like:
- a limited edition
- a collector’s item
- a weird little piece of history
And honestly?
If I didn’t already have an unopened box of Kellogg’s cereal at home, I probably would’ve bought it immediately.
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