The Story of Umaibo Becoming 12 Yen

I think writing needs momentum, so for this trial, I'm going to write one article with a 30-minute time limit.
I won't be polishing it later, and I'll stop whenever the time is up, even if it's mid-sentence.

It seems Umaibo will be 12 yen starting in April 2022.

There had been rumors for a while, but finally, the official Yaokin Twitter account confirmed the "12 yen" price. It's truly sad news.

Now that I'm an adult with a certain amount of disposable income and am drifting away from cheap snacks, if someone asked me, ”Do you always” support Umaibo? My heart would ache, but sad is sad.

I was also a boy raised on cheap snacks, so the news that Umaibo, the ace of the candy store, is raising its price is hard to ignore.
Especially in my childhood, when I didn't study or take lessons, the battle was about how to make cheap snacks last as long as possible (what does that even mean?), and it was Umaibo that supported me through those days.

What is the best value-for-money snack? After much debate with friends at the time, we concluded that “licking a PEZ refill until it dissolved without chewing” was the way, but I could never resist and would end up chewing the nearly-gone PEZ, so I couldn't achieve the theoretical maximum value of PEZ.

Also, swapping the heads, one of the charms of PEZ, was way too expensive for elementary school students, so it was considered taboo in our cheap snack value research group.
I couldn't keep up with such a stoic PEZ lifestyle until the end.
Sorry, PEZ.
Boys and girls in the countries that import it, please carry on for me, as I could not achieve it.

Umaibo showed a ray of light to my weak self.
It’s an explosion of affordability at 10 yen per stick, but to face it with the standard method of "buy -> eat" is still not enough. You need a little something extra.

That was when I found “Umaibo Takoyaki Flavor, 30-pack” placed as a prize in a UFO catcher at a nearby arcade.
That arcade was famous for having relatively easy-to-win UFO catchers, and the arm settings for the Umaibo catcher were also relatively strong.
In other words, you could get 30 sticks for 100 yen.

If you look at this image, you can see that there is a ”waist” between the top and bottom rows that is easy to grab, so if you align it parallel to the UFO catcher's arm, you can win it about 90% of the time.

Then the final problem is, how do you get it parallel to the arm?

If you put in 100 yen just to get it horizontal, you might end up losing money. That would defeat the whole purpose, so I wait for the right moment.

I just wait patiently.
I wait for someone else to play the Umaibo catcher, leave it in a horizontal position, and give up... I wait like an animal hunting in the savanna... in other words, I act like a hyena.

On Saturdays and Sundays, I go to the arcade every two or three hours to check the orientation of the Umaibo.

If it's horizontal, I take it. If it's not, I don't.
If it's horizontal, I take it. If it's not, I don't...
This is how I secure a week's worth of Umaibo.
That is my job on the weekends.

In Evangelion, there was a scene where Shinji Ikari repeated, “Target in the center, switch...” It's exactly the same thing.
I, too, was a child of the new century.

Umaibo, which shared those joys and sorrows with me, is finally raising its price.

Just as I have grown into an adult, Umaibo is moving on to the next stage.
I've made a fuss about it being sad news, but I want to send it off thinking of it as a new beginning.

Maybe I'll buy some Umaibo for the first time in a while if I see them!

By the way, while researching for this article, I found an interesting piece.
Lots of secrets about Umaibo!!

Umaemon seems to have a more fulfilling life than I thought, so I should probably worry about my own life more than Umaibo's.

The End