Did you know that on top of Valentines day and White day, Korea has ONE MORE holiday for giving sweets to someone special? Pepero day 빼빼로데이~ a holiday made for giving pepero snacks that is held every year on 11/11! Why that date? Well because it resembles the stick biscuit treat! ♥
If you are a fan of Asian snacks, chances are you have run into Pepero or something similar before at the markets! It is a Korean “remake” by Lotte of the very popular Japanese snack Pocky by Glico, but since it has been on the shelves here since around 1983 it is thought of as a beloved Korean snack by everyone here. Taste-wise it is hard for me to tell the difference honestly! ^^
Pepero Day is a holiday mainly for couples and students to exchange beautiful Pepero-themed gifts or hand out small treats to friends at school. I think it is a really sweet idea (literally) and is not very painful on the wallet since a basic box only costs 1,000 won! Students can buy one box and split it up into several smaller packets for mini gifts, or you can buy very extravagant Pepero gifts that cost 20,000 to even over 50,000!
Lotte (the maker of Pepero) denies that they started this holiday themselves, but insists that they started to notice a large jump in sales for the snack every November as other schools caught on to the trend. When they discovered the reason behind it in the 90′s they wanted to encourage the holiday with special promos and gift sets which seems to expand more and more every year. Nowadays you can buy a range of items from other brands here, but Lotte still have the largest presence since they are the original.
Pepero has a normal box design that they tend to use throughout the year, but around Pepero day 빼빼로데이 they roll out this box style which is colored a bit differently! At first I was not sure why they would change the box just because of the holiday, but I am pretty sure now that they reasoning is to make it a little more elegant-looking + the colored edges also allow you to use them in making shapes with the boxes…
