Designed by a kid for kids: Calbee trials veggie snack invented by elementary school student
Coro Coro Vegetable (コロコロベジタブル koro koro vejitaburu) is a collection of vegetable cubes – featuring corn, carrot, sweet potato, edamame, purple potato and azuki bean – that are stacked together to form a larger cube.
According to Calbee, the veggie-forward snack is packed with ‘naturally delicious flavour’ and nutrition, and is a novel way to get kids to eat their five-a-day.
The idea for the unique snack was entered by a youngster who shall remain anonymous into Calbee’s Snack Contest in 2019, held annually to solicit snack ideas from school-aged children. Coro Coro Vegetable was awarded the top spot from over 1,000 applications received from children in the Tochigi, Kanagawa and Chiba prefectures. The winner was decided through a web vote by Calbee employees.
It took over a year of research and development and over 100 taste trials to ready the snack for commercialisation, but will now go on sale in extremely limited quantities on Calbee’s online store to coincide with the contest’s 10th anniversary.
Only 120 cubes will go on sale as each one is made by hand, according to the company. Since it’s a labour of love, Calbee hopes snackers will take the time to savour each cube individually, while ‘appreciating the hopes and feelings that the students poured into the entry they submitted for the contest.’
Packed in a transparent bag to show the unique cubes, Coro Coro Vegetable has an RRP of 800 yen ($7.77) per bag.
