Frequenters of the Japanese import aisle in stores overseas may be familiar with Meiji’s iconic Hello Panda chocolate snacks. What many may not realize, however, is that the panda-shaped cookies are no longer sold in Japan — and haven’t been for more than three decades.
Hello Panda is a bite-size crunchy biscuit with a panda illustration printed on it and chocolate-cream filling. Meiji started selling the snack domestically in 1987 under the name Konnichiwa Panda, riding the wave of Japan’s panda boom sparked by the birth of giant panda Tong Tong at Ueno Zoo in Tokyo.
But despite the panda craze, the product struggled to stand out in Japan’s fiercely competitive confectionery market, and Meiji stopped selling them just two years later, in 1989.
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