Ji-Hwan Lim, Assistant Professor at Wonkwang University Newspaper Broadcasting Company
The retro craze doesn’t cool down. Popular songs from the 90s and 00s started to be remade one by one, and now they are affecting the media industry as a whole, including movies and dramas. And the public reaction to this has been positive. With the pleasure of meeting those days once more, he is showing interest with the sympathy he feels, “Do you know?”
The retail industry is also focusing on re-launching products and services that once dominated by using ‘memory’ as a keyword. The most notable among them is ‘Pokemon Bread’. Pokemon Bread, which was re-released on February 24th following 16 years, is gaining popularity with cumulative sales of 10 million units. In particular, the stickers included with the bread are a popular factor, and unlike the past, collecting stickers for fun is controversial today.
On average, regarding 230,000 Pokemon are sold per day, and supply is not keeping up with the surge in demand. Because of this, consumers are frantic to get Pokemon Bread, and the seller using it is frowned upon. Acts such as hiding it and selling it to regular customers secretly, or forcing a certain amount of money to be filled with other expensive items to make a strong sale are actually hitting the market. On various second-hand trading platforms, it is easy to find articles with Pokemon bread at a price that is three or four times higher than the regular price.
The Pokemon Bread shortage has contributed not only to sellers but also to consumers’ desire to own them. There are cases in which the Pokemon Bread that is on display for sale is broken, and that is because of the sticker. Rather than eating bread, shaking or pushing to check the type of sticker enclosed with it is damaging the value of the product. Consumers who look at the bread should not buy it, but the seller who cannot sell the bread suffers unfair losses. Also, the open run phenomenon, which was only seen in luxury stores, is used to purchase Pokemon bread. The appearance of waiting for the goods in stock in time for the convenience store logistics vehicle and purchasing them immediately, or waiting for a long time before the opening hours of large stores to receive a number ticket, is reminiscent of the luxury department store.
There have even been several incidents of using Pokemon Bread. When a consumer who was looking for Pokemon bread mightn’t purchase it because the product was out of stock, he said, “Isn’t it a lie?” and “Isn’t there a real Pokemon bread?”.
I’m not very happy with the Pokémon Bread I encountered these days. When I was young, I also bought and ate a lot of Pokemon bread and enjoyed collecting stickers, but whenever I hear the previous news, I am left with a regret of ‘What is that bread like this…’. It is as if the Honey Butter Chip Crash 8 years ago was replayed. Honey Butter Chips, released in 2014, also showed several controversies over sales and a similar move to the current Pokemon Bread, but in the end, they are now easily obtainable.
The use of words such as ‘memories’ and ‘children’ to arouse consumers’ homesickness and at the same time leave a doubt that it is a stimulating marketing that uses the purchasing psychology ‘everyone else has but only me’ without intentionally supplying quantities. . I do not want to discriminate who is at fault by specifying the company that makes the product, the seller who sells it, and the consumer who wants to buy it. It is inevitable in a situation where supply and demand flow, but when I hear the bitter news, I think of this.
‘Everyone lives hard, they live really hard’
/Ji-Hwan Lim, Assistant Professor at Wonkwang University Newspaper Broadcasting Company
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