Japan’s largest ice cream factory is so popular it holds a Willy Wonka-esque lottery to get in.
popsicles
If you don’t know what “nettori” means in Japanese, you definitely will after eating this ice cream.
Used Pikachu Garigari-kun sticks are being bought for over 140 times the cost of a new box of the frozen treats.
Lucky buyers will also score the chance to win a limited-edition collectible Pokémon trading card.
Consider this your treasure map to the wonders hiding in Japanese convenience stores’ cooler cases.
When you’re a little kid, any slightly long object turns into your own personal phone. The remote control, a banana, maybe even a sausage have all served as substitute talking devices for children not quite old enough to have their own fully-functional mobile device. But frozen treats, no matter how perfectly sized, have always been out of reach as a play phone, transforming into a puddle of sticky goo before the purple dragon had his turn to talk. But now you can be the envy of all those 5-year-olds yammering like fools on their pickle phones with the icePhone case that looks like a real crunch bar or popsicle.
In the wake of its limited edition corn soup-flavoured brethren, a new Garigari-kun popsicle is rumoured to be hitting Japan’s freezers any day now. There has yet to be any official announcement from the famous popsicles’ maker Akagi, but one netizen recently spotted what looks like an ad for, of all things, a potato stew-flavoured ice cream. More details after the jump!