Mammoth burgers lead marketers' greasy charge to a porkier Nippon

[Anchorman]

After resisting the urge to supersize for years, food is finally getting big in Japan, according to Weekly Playboy (5/28).

The MegaMac, a monster burger boasting four beef patties, three buns and an artery-clogging 754 calories per serving, has proved an enormous hit for McDonald's Japan since it was made available on limited release in December last year.

"We imagined men around 20 or so looking for an energy boost would be the main market for the MegaMac," a spokesman from the McDonald's Japan Communications Division gushes to Weekly Playboy. "Frankly speaking, we never dreamed it'd be such a huge hit."

And burgers aren't the only fast food attaining life-threatening proportions. Instant ramen noodles are also sizing up.

Recent times have seen the release of Dekao (Huge King) and Super Cup instant noodles, with companies trumpteting that quantities have been increased by 50 percent, or even doubled. One product even contains a staggering 1,100 calories, almost half the daily recommended 2,500-calorie intake of the average Japanese male.

Even items once marketed for their daintiness, like confectioner Glico's Pucchin Pudding, have gotten into the lardy caper, with the new Happy Pucchin Pudding boasting that it's three times bigger than the original.

And it's not just the portions that are growing -- sales of supersized swill are also swelling.

"We're on pace to double what we estimated we'd sell," Takashi Arima, a spokesman for Glico, producer of the portly pudding, tells Weekly Playboy. "We've found this product has allowed customers to rediscover the pleasures of Pucchin Pudding."

Competing with McDonald's in the behemoth burger stakes are Wendy's, who recently released their Big Triple, and Freshness Burger, which unveiled its Classic Double-Double Burger; both of which are also claiming supersized sales.

"Fortunately, all the items in our Classic line, including the Double-Double Burger, are selling exceptionally well at the moment," a Freshness Marketing spokesman says. "We're selling about 15,000 burgers a month."

Japan is currently supposed to be on a health kick, but the proliferation of swollen servings is obvious, according to Kyubei Yanagio, a self-professed connoisseur of "B-Grade" foods.

"Regardless of the so-called 'health boom,' there are loads of people out there who couldn't give a damn about their calorie intake and just want to eat as much as they can. But these people haven't really been catered to until now. Companies are finally realizing these kinds of people are out there and have produced large volume foods selling for a reasonable price, and this has made these products extremely popular," the garbage gourmand tells Weekly Playboy.

Hikaru Hayashi from the Hakuhodo Institute of Life & Living tells the weekly the inflated fast food phenomenon is all to do with marketing.

"We're faced with the dilemma of being in an age where we need to sell food to people who aren't really hungry. To do that, you've got to come up with concepts that give the food added value, like, 'This food is healthy,' 'This food is fun,' 'Everybody's talking about this food,' or 'Eat this and you'll stand out from the crowd.' The current trend is to appeal to everybody's desire to be slim, so most foods emphasize how small they are, but the mega-foods are a reaction to that. They're not intended to be filling, they're intended to be topical, with everybody talking about how huge the servings are. That's where they're getting their added value from, and that's why I think they're selling so well," Hayashi says.

Junk food connoisseur Yanagio says that Japan can expect to feast on over-sized foods for some time yet.

"It's much easier for companies to simply bring out bigger versions of popular foods they're already selling than to come up with entirely new food ideas, so I guess we're going to see supersized versions of all sorts of favorites from now on," he says.

Also expected to be the next big thing is Burger King, which is returning to Japan again next month, after being too expensive for many when it last tried this market in the late '90s. Big things are expected of the chain known for its Whoppers.

Yanagio says this is all adding up for the marketing masters to fatten the calf that is the Japanese consumer.

"What's now a supersized meal will eventually become a standard part of the menu, giving customers the option of choosing to eat more," he tells Weekly Playboy. "And the upshot of that will be in clothes: Where they're now sold in sizes of S, M, and L, we'll be adding LL and LLL." (By Ryann Connell)