The bottle is familiar, but the content is not

Hand cream from a soy snapper? Only in Japan! As much as the Japanese are known for their serious tech, they can come up with some whacky stuff too. The original soy snapper (or shoyu tai 醤油鯛—yhose insistent on accuracy will point out that the shape is based on the sea bream)) is a cleaver idea even when it was quite off-beat, but now the same form is available in a much larger size and is filled with hand cream. Thankfully, the Osaka Soy Hand Cream does not smell like soy sauce or even fish. But staying with the food theme, the maker of the hand cream, Heso Production, has incorporated soy-derived actives in what the company called “luxurious blend of moisturising ingredients”.

Still, we were hoping that the hand cream could offer even a hint of what is drizzled onto sushi. The other ingredients listed include honey, hydrolysed collagen, hyaluronic acid, shea butter, squalene, and Vaseline. The company assured that the formulation is “non-sticky and smooth to use”. As it was launched just three days ago, we are unable score one to determine the veracity of the claim. Still, we think it is unlikely that Heso Production would put out a product just to bank on its gimmicky appeal. Or, to ensnare tourists, in search of the weird and wonderful.

The soy snapper itself was created in the 1954 in Osaka by Teruo Watanabe, founder of Asahi Sogyo (a ward in the city). It was called runcharm, a portmanteau of ‘lunch’ and ‘charming’ (the hand cream is also called runcharm hand cream, but it certainly is not as handy) from the expression “make your lunch charming”. Before the small fish-shaped soy sauce container became available (later, for tonkatsu, there are pig-shaped ones to house the katsu sauce), the Japanese apparently carried their soy sauce in small bottles that, when not tightly capped, could spill their contents. The runcharm totally changed the portability of soy sauce.

Heso Production is no stranger to the cute, the unconventional, even the bizarre. And they have a special affinity to the runcharm. In fact, just last October, they released cookies and chocolates in the shape of the soy sauce container. Nothing outrageous in those. But we did not expect them to create massive one to store hand cream, complete with blacken polyethylene housing to give the illusion of soy sauce inside. Even the packaging—environmentalists will be up in arms—is one that is more akin to products in the food aisle of supermarkets that those in personal care stores such as Matsumoto Kiyoshi. What will they think of next? A runcharm for toner?

Osaka Soy Hand Cream, ¥900 (or about S$7.80), is available at souvenir shops and trains stations across Japan. Product photos: Heso Production. Collage (top): Just So