South Korean millennials battle to get hold of Pokémon snacks

YOON SANG-SOON leaves a 7-11 in Seoul, downcast. He showed up at 11pm, after the convenience store is restocked, but the 27-year-old missed out. No matter. Earlier, after waiting an hour for a delivery van to arrive at another shop, he had found the prize that millennial South Koreans are hunting for obsessively: Pokémon bread.

“This is all because of nostalgia shared by people in their 20s and 30s,” he explains. In 1998 SPC Samlip, a confectioner, launched more than ten varieties of cake, each packet sporting characters from Pokémon (short for “pocket monsters”), an empire of games, TV shows and merchandise, with one of 151 different stickers inside. Kids queued to buy “Team Rocket’s chocolate rolls” and “Ghastly’s peeling bread”, because, in the words of Pokémon’s self-serving official slogan, “You gotta catch ’em all.”