At the recent BevTech Japan trade fair we caught a display of Japanese regional ciders (sadly, non-alcoholic) and loved the retro labels so much we wanted to share them here.
On the left below there is the Unzen Lemonade (温泉レモネード) from Nagasaki, complete with charming lass on the front. The bottles on the right are the beet cider Sepia no Shigeki (セピアのしげき), from Hokkaido.
Local Japanese cider is apparently experiencing a minor boom. Asahi’s Mitsuya Cider might well be the only one you can see in your convenience store but, according to the Japan Soft Drink Association, the number of regional ciders has increased from 62 in 2007 to nearly 130.
The success of Showa era films like Always has made even younger consumers yearn for “nostalgic” tastes (including when the nostalgia is for a time before they were born).
Recent bloggers have also highlighted growing sales and the incredible variety of flavors from around the country. At BevTech alone we saw a wide range, including apricot, takoyaki, mango and yuzu drinks. Certainly beats endless variations of canned coffee!
Given that many of the ciders are completely new products, this “retro” could be said to purely be about the packaging and not much else. Another sure way to attract young consumers, though, is pricing: the drinks come pretty cheap, most bottles costing 2-300 yen ($2-3).
[We also like the Kamen Rider series of ciders too (above, left), which taps nostalgia not so much for furusato (old hometown) tastes but retro pop culture.
