Will Banana Become The New Honey Butter Craze?

While 2015 was overtaken by everything honey butter-flavored, a new flavor may be here to stay in 2016.

Recently, banana-flavored snacks have taken South Korea by storm, similarly to how honey butter-flavored snacks were all the craze last year.

According to a news report by Korea JoongAng Daily, Orion Confectionery’s original Choco Pie (a marshmallow-filled, chocolate covered pie snack) has never been released in a different flavor for the last 42 years. However, company researchers devoted the last three years in order to create what now is known as the Choco Pie Banana (pictured above).

The Choco Pie Banana, like the name suggests, is a variation of the original snack, with banana flakes and puree mixed into the marshmallow portion to give the snack a sweet banana flavor. This experimental release was an apparent success, selling “over 14 million packs of Choco Pie Banana within three weeks of its launch in early March.”

In fact, the snack was reportedly hard to come across in various supermarkets and stores, a similar outcome to what happened with the Honey Butter Chips.

Of course, rival companies, such as Lotte Confectionery, Paris Baguette; and Shinesegae Food, have jumped on this trend as well, and have seen monetary success on their banana-flavored items.

Notably, an alcohol company has also decided to participate in this trend.

Kooksoondang is a well-known producer of makgeolli (traditional Korean rice wine) in South Korea. In answer to this new banana craze, the company has released a new banana-flavored makgeolli (also pictured above). They believe it will be a successful investment, and are looking to incorporate other flavors as well.

While banana-flavored items aren’t necessarily new (i.e. the iconic banana-flavored milk), such a wide variety of banana-flavored products have never been released this quickly. Many consider banana to be the “new honey butter.”

What do you think about this new banana craze?

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