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The story
Calbee changed the packaging of its flagship potato chip lineup to a black-and-white color scheme, and when Nikkei Cross Trend published a paywalled article claiming that “87% of older customers held back from buying,” the story spread fast on 5ch’s News Flash+ board. The redesign is widely seen as an extension of the company’s response to this year’s naphtha (petrochemical feedstock) shortage, but commenters pointed out that Calbee’s earnings announcement on November 6 for the April–September 2026 half showed revenue up 6.0% and operating profit up 16.3% — a solid increase on both counts. The apparent contradiction between the claimed “exodus of older customers” and the strong earnings became the thread’s main talking point.
Calbee Goes Black-and-White: 87% Say They’re Buying Fewer “Potechi” Chips — Effect Most Pronounced Among Older Shoppers
Nikkei Cross Trend, Staff Writer, 2026.11.06 — Paid subscribers only
Source: xtrend.nikkei.com / Read the original article here
What people said
My chip journey has gone: potato chips → popcorn → snap peas → back to chips again.
Every time I switch, the moment I eat whatever I was eating right before the switch, I almost throw up.
What kind of condition is this?
Japanese-grown potatoes are the most expensive potatoes in the world, after all.
Just imagine what's happening with the world's most expensive rice.
Honestly, it's the perfect packaging to put in the coffin as a grave offering for a grandpa or grandma who loved their chips.
Seeing this, you'd think it was a funeral offering lol
https://static.asahi-weekly.asahi.com/news-topics/34173/xCB5Y22CowskdVjns440h6zjxYhdfTTObFobgiXA.jpg
They could've handled this a bit better, surely.
Sales dropped so they had no choice but to walk it back, but reverting the whole thing would feel like admitting defeat, which is annoying — so for now it's just the front half.
That looks awful.
Awful in more ways than one.
Not about this company specifically — this is about a non-food manufacturer I know.
Stuff like a bargain eel-rice-bowl chain that just pulls Chinese-farmed eel out of a pack, or a gym with no shower rooms and no instructors, or a cut-rate barbershop that skips the hair wash and shave — anyone can think of ideas like that, but nobody actually does them, because having at least a minimum amount of pride in your business matters.
TV was loving it too, stoking anxiety with stuff like 'look how many products use naphtha!'
So apparently going black-and-white had nothing to do with it.
Wait, it's selling just fine then. Guess it's just older customers who left.
Results for April–September 2026 (year-on-year)
• Revenue: ¥175.698 billion (up 6.0%)
• Operating profit: ¥11.81 billion (up 16.3%)
• Half-year net income: ¥7.298 billion (up 7.5%)
It's true. What are people even thinking, jumping on an article like this to bash the company lol
Seconds are available too!
No chips for you, old man — not good for your health.
I get the psychological resistance to something this conspicuous when you're the only company doing it.
No other company is doing this, so whoever proposed it and thought sales wouldn't drop must be an idiot.
Sales haven't dropped though?
That article in post 1 is based on Ponta card member data (a Japanese retail points card) — and only about 90,000 members at that — it's one of those articles that starts from the conclusion that older customers bought less.
https://www.gamespark.jp/imgs/ogp_f/82250.jpg
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FxdGhk9aYAEToLo.jpg
In my area, the official municipal garbage bags still haven't come back in stock.
There were reports that naphtha supply was uneven depending on the industry.
20-liter synthetic oil that used to sell for ¥12,000 is now more than double that — lol
Even Chipstar cans are only a little over half full when you open them.
With this '7-Eleven-style' downgrade (a jab at convenience chains quietly shrinking portions or quality while charging the same), they've basically become the enemy.
Found a Nagano Prefecture resident! ('hakeen' is net slang for 'spotted' — a jab at a stereotype that people from Nagano are notoriously frugal)
There was no 'everything's fine' about it. At the time, the oil shortage meant public-sector bids weren't going through, and it wouldn't have been strange at all if waste incineration plants or sewage treatment facilities had shut down. The only reason they kept running was behind-the-scenes effort from people on the ground.
Background and Key Points of This Debate
The backstory behind Calbee switching its flagship product packaging to a black-and-white color scheme traces back to the domestic naphtha (a petrochemical feedstock) shortage that made headlines in the first half of 2026. At the time, companies citing the shortage as a reason for their actions were questioned as possibly “jumping on the bandwagon,” and the government itself stated that “supply was sufficient.” The “87% held back from buying” figure reported this time comes from an analysis article based on Ponta card membership data (around 90,000 members, according to commenters), and the representativeness of that sample can’t be verified from the article text alone. Meanwhile, since Calbee’s earnings announcement on November 6 for the April–September 2026 period showed growth in both revenue and profit, the thread’s main point of contention became the apparent contradiction between the claimed “exodus of older customers” and the strong results. That said, the overall growth could potentially be explained by other customer segments or strong new products — meaning a decline specific to older shoppers doesn’t necessarily contradict the company’s overall performance, a nuance the thread didn’t really dig into.
*This article is compiled and summarized from the 5ch (News Flash+) thread “Calbee Goes Black-and-White, 87% Say They’re Buying Fewer “Potechi” Chips 👋👴 Effect Most Pronounced Among Older Shoppers.”
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