infamous Honey Butter chips, released in August 2014 by Haetae Confectionery & Foods Company. However, these chips are not worth the hype.
Honey Butter chips have become hugely popular, with reports of racks emptying within 10 minutes of being
restocked and some markets setting limits of two bags per customer. They've been so hard to find that people have turned to extreme measures to obtain them, and there is even a smartphone application that tracks where the nearest Honey Butter chips can be found.
accomplished when they obtain them. Fans have posted pictures of themselves eating these chips, and this further pushes people to try and find them. Due to the difficulty in
obtaining Honey Butter chips, Koreans and Korean Americans alike have tried to make homemade versions by putting melted butter and honey on regular potato chips.
Yet some wonder if the
snacks merit the trouble.
Haetae says that the tastes of French butter and acacia honey make Honey Butter chips so appealing. I think, however, that many have hopped on this bandwagon just because the chips are so elusive.
My friend who visited Korea recently brought me a bag of these chips. While they are definitely unique, they are not something I would go out of my way to find because they just taste like slightly sweet Pringles. Kyungmin Jun, a senior at Myongji University in Seoul, agrees.
"These chips are unique
because of their sweet taste, which isn't common with potato chips in Korea," said Jun. "But I don't have the urge to go through the struggle of finding them. I don't understand why people are so obsessed with just a snack."
"These chips are good, but they're not as good as I thought they would be," Soyoung Jun, a senior at Hallym University in Chuncheon, told me.
"I was expecting a lot since they are so popular," Soyoung Jun continued. "I think their popularity will certainly decrease really soon when people realize these chips aren't all that
special."
Overall, while taste accounts to some extent for their
popularity, a big reason they're trendy is the tendency humans have in trying to get items that are hard to find. Many other companies use this artificial scarcity technique, intentionally producing a limited supply to make items seem rare and
increase demand.
Although I think they are worth the \2,500 ($2.32) they are selling for in Korean
markets, these chips are
definitely not worth the recent eBay selling price of $56.99 for three bags in the US. Their popularity will certainly
decrease with time.
Rachel Lee
Grade 10, Harvard-Westlake School