Honey Butter Chips facts for kids
Honey Butter Chips (Hangul: 허니버터칩) are a popular brand of potato chips from South Korea. They are made by Haitai Calbee, a company formed by Korean and Japanese snack makers. These chips first came out in August 2014. They became super famous very quickly, mostly because of people sharing about them on social media in late 2014 and early 2015. This snack was so popular that it started a big trend in South Korea called the "Honey-Butter Craze."
In Japan, these chips are known as Happiness Butter Potato Chips (ポテトチップスしあわせバター).
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How Honey Butter Chips Became Popular
The Haitai-Calbee Partnership
The Japanese company Calbee had made a honey butter chip before in 2012 for its own market. However, it wasn't very popular there. To grow their business, Calbee teamed up with the Korean company Haitai. Together, they brought the honey butter chip to Korea.
The Honey-Butter Craze Begins
The "Honey-Butter Craze" started in August 2014 when Honey Butter Chips were launched in Korea. Even though the original version didn't do well in Japan, the Korean version became incredibly popular. Young people especially loved them, and the news spread fast on social media from late 2014 to early 2015.
The chips became so popular that they were almost impossible to find in stores. People even started reselling them online for three times their normal price! To keep up with the huge demand, Haitai-Calbee built a new factory in South Korea, which started making chips in early 2016. By early 2015, the company announced that sales had reached 23 billion won (about USD 20.3 million). They expected sales to hit 100 billion won (about USD 100 million) by the end of that year.
How Celebrities Helped the Craze
Korean celebrities played a big part in making Honey Butter Chips even more famous. K-pop stars like Sooyoung from Girls' Generation, Siwon from Super Junior, and Hyomin from T-ara posted selfies with the chips. They would often pose with the golden bags next to their faces. In August 2021, the K-pop group MCND even released a song called "H.B.C," which stands for Honey Butter Chip. An actress named So Yoo-Jin shared a picture of the chips on her Instagram. A famous news anchor for KBS also posted a picture of herself holding a bag, saying she was "laughing and crying over one bag of chips."
On a TV show called My Little Television in May 2015, rock singer Jung Joon Young reviewed and compared many different honey-butter-flavored snacks. This also helped keep the craze going.
Why Were Honey Butter Chips So Hard to Find?
The chips went viral on social media, making them incredibly popular. Because of the huge demand, Haitai-Calbee temporarily stopped taking new orders in November 2014. Store owners often put up signs saying "Honey Butter Chip, sold out." Some stores even started "waiting lists" for customers and limited sales to one bag per person.
Due to this shortage, in December 2014, people were selling Honey Butter Chips on online shopping sites for much higher prices. Some bags sold for nearly 50 times their original cost! Even in 2023, you could find them on Amazon for almost $56 USD.
Haitai-Calbee increased its production by three times and ran its factories 24 hours a day to meet the demand. However, they were careful not to increase production too much. They knew that crazes can sometimes end quickly, and they didn't want to make too many chips if the demand suddenly dropped.
Other Honey Butter Snacks
After Honey Butter Chips became a huge hit, Haitai-Calbee released other snacks with similar flavors.
- Jagabee Honey Mild
- These are honey butter potato fries made by Haitai-Calbee.
- Honey Tong Tong
- These are ridged, triangle-shaped potato chips made by Haitai alone, not with Calbee. They came out after the Honey Butter Chip craze.
Special Flavors of Honey Butter Chips
Honey Butter Chips also released many special edition flavors over time:
- Honey Butter Chip Special Edition - Canada Maple Syrup
- Honey Butter Chip Special Edition - Cherry Blossom
- Honey Butter Chip Winter Warmers - Almond Caramel
- Honey Butter Chip Special Edition - Lavender & Blueberry
- Honey Butter Chip Special Edition - Chou Cream & Maple Syrup
- Honey Butter Chip Special Edition - Fromage Blanc
- Honey Butter Chip Save the Date - Wedding Cake
- Honey Butter Chip Special Edition - Sentimental Season - Mocha
- Honey Butter Chip Especial Edicion - Dulce de Leche
Other Companies Make Similar Chips
When Honey Butter Chips became famous, many other companies started making similar products. They often used "Honey Butter" in their names or copied the design and flavor. It was like "Honey Butter" became a magic word for selling food!
A big Korean food company called Nongshim launched "Sumi Chip Honey Mustard" in December 2014. These chips tasted similar to Honey Butter Chips. Unlike the original, Sumi Chips were easy to find in many stores. Because of this, customers started buying Sumi Chips instead. Sumi Chips actually became more popular than Honey Butter Chips for a while, selling four times more, with about ten thousand packs sold every day. Nongshim even set a new record for monthly sales in the Korean snack industry.
Due to the shortage of Honey Butter Chips and all the new copycat products, Honey Butter Chips, which had been the top seller in late 2014, dropped to third place in snack sales by early 2015.
- NongShim "Sumi Potato Chips"
- These chips became very popular when the original Honey Butter Chips were hard to find. NongShim made a lot of them, and Sumi Potato Chips soon sold more than Honey Butter Chips.
- Lotte "Honey Drunken Potato Chips" (Hangul: 꿀먹은 감자칩)
The "Honey Butter" trend wasn't just for snacks. Some companies even made cosmetic products with honey and butter, and there were even furniture designs shaped like Honey Butter Chip bags!
Make Your Own Honey Butter Chips
During the craze, many people started sharing recipes on YouTube for how to make homemade Honey Butter Chips. Using simple ingredients, people could make their own potato chips that tasted similar to the famous original.
