The Cheerio Corporation, a medium sized and quite fun beverage company in Japan is about to launch a new product called “Nanchatte cola”. The company is very popular among 10 to 20 year-olds, young people who are looking for larger sized but lower priced drinks which also have a fun dimension. One of Cheerio’s most well known products is “Life Guard” energy drink which has been in the market 20 for years, and the company usually focuses on young people to develop its new products.
“Nanchatte” means fake or joking in Japanese so this beverage is based on fake concept. The company has launched 2 ‘fake’ beverages before (drinks which appear to be something different to what they really are). The first one, “Nanchatte Orange” was a fake soy sauce concept in 2008. The liquid was black in colour and the PET bottle and label design looked just like the packaging design of a major Japanese soy sauce brand. But instead of being salty, its taste was in fact….. orangeade. This created a big impression in the market. And in 2009 “Nanchatte Cola” was packaged and coloured like Tabasco hot chili sauce, but was actually a cola.
The new “Nanchatte Cola 2010” will launch on 13 Dec. 2010. This year’s version is also a fake soy sauce (the colour is again black, and the PET bottle and the label design are again similar to soy sauce) but this time it is a fizzy cola-flavoured soda. However this time it does contain soy sauce (about 0.3%)! Will it be salty? The company maintains it won’t but the proof will be in the tasting!