Gari Gari Kun’s 9-Cent Apology
A hundred employees of a Japanese ice cream company lined up outside their factory, bowed deeply, and apologised on
A hundred employees of a Japanese ice cream company lined up outside their factory, bowed deeply, and apologised on national television. Their crime: raising the price of Gari Gari Kun, Japan’s best-selling popsicle, by 10 yen. About 9 cents.
The company had held that price for 25 years.
Gari Gari Kun is not just a popsicle. It’s a childhood constant. The mascot is a toothy cartoon schoolboy with a wide-open mouth, printed on blue packaging in every convenience store in Japan. The name means “crunchy boy,” an onomatopoeia for the sound of biting into ice. Akagi Nyugyo sells over 400 million of them per year. Parents who ate them as children buy them for their own kids. The price, for most of living memory, has been whatever coins a child has in their pocket.
When the company announced it would raise that price by a single coin, they treated it like a death in the family.
They had their reasons.
The Trauma
Akagi Nyugyo learned its lesson in 1979. The oil shock had driven up costs across Japan. The company raised the price of its main product, a shaved ice cup called Akagi Shigure, from 30 yen to 50 yen. Sales collapsed. The company nearly went bankrupt.
The experience left a permanent scar. Inside Akagi Nyugyo, a principle took hold: price increases are a last resort. Consumers absorb costs. Companies cut margins. You do whatever it takes. You do not ask children to pay more for ice cream.
Two years later, the company launched Gari Gari Kun. The concept was simple: a popsicle that kids could eat with one hand while playing outside. The price was 50 yen.
By 1991, costs had risen. The company raised the price to 60 yen. Then it held that price for 25 years.
The Comparison
Coca-Cola also famously held its price. From 1886 to 1959, a bottle of Coke cost exactly five cents. The company was so desperate to avoid raising it that the president of Coca-Cola asked President Eisenhower to mint a 7.5-cent coin. (They were hunting buddies. It didn’t work.)
When Coke finally broke the nickel price in 1959, the floodgates opened. The price rose to 10 cents, then 20 cents, then 35 cents, then 50 cents, then a dollar. By 2025, a single bottle costs $1.50 or more.
Gari Gari Kun took a different path. Over 43 years, the price moved only three times: 50 yen in 1981, 60 yen in 1991, 70 yen in 2016, 80 yen in 2024. Total increase: 30 yen. About 27 cents.
The company’s philosophy never changed: elementary school children should be able to afford it with the coins in their pocket.
The Breaking Point
By 2015, Akagi Nyugyo couldn’t make a profit on Gari Gari Kun anymore. Ingredients, electricity, packaging, distribution, even the wooden sticks the popsicles were formed around. Everything had gotten more expensive. The company had debated a price increase internally for seven years. Each year, they absorbed the costs. Each year, they held.
In 2015, they couldn’t hold anymore.
The board projected sales would drop 6% after the announcement. A quarter-century of loyalty would evaporate over a single coin.
They raised the price anyway. And they decided to tell everyone exactly why.
The Commercial
Aired three times. April 1 and 2, 2016. Prime-time slots. One full-page ad in the Nikkei. No paid amplification.
The 60-second spot showed CEO Hideki Inoue, the chairman, and roughly 100 employees standing in formation outside the Fukaya City factory. In the background: a 1970s folk song called “Neage” (Price Increase) by Wataru Takada. The lyrics list excuses companies give for not raising prices. “We have no plans to raise prices. We won’t raise prices this year. For now, we’d like to hold off.”
As the song plays, the employees bow. Text appears: “We held out for 25 years, but… 60→70.”
Japanese corporate culture takes apologies seriously. An insincere bow is worse than no bow. The depth, the duration, the angle are all scrutinised. When Toyota’s president apologised after an executive was arrested, the room erupted in camera flashes the moment he bent at the waist. That’s what the press came to see.
Akagi Nyugyo’s bow was studied. It passed.
The Result
A million views in one week. Business Insider, Quartz, the BBC. The story spread worldwide.
Then the sales numbers came in.
April 2016: up 10% year-over-year. Not down 6%. Up 10%.
The marketing director’s explanation: “We told the truth about everything. We responded to every media request. We communicated our honest feelings. That’s what customers supported.”
People in their 40s, who had eaten Gari Gari Kun as children, realised their kids were paying almost the same price they had. The 10-yen increase felt not like betrayal but like vindication. The company had held the line for a generation.
The company held the 70 yen price for another eight years. When they raised it again in 2024, to 80 yen, they still made an announcement. Still showed up. The commercial featured the same employees, bowing even deeper than before.
Apologies only work when they’re backed by decades of behaviour that proves you mean it.
Gari Gari Kun is still the best-selling popsicle in Japan. Any child can still afford one with the coins in their pocket. It just costs 80 yen now.
Sources
J-Cast: Gari Gari Kun Sales Up 10% After Price Increase
Nikkei: Gari Gari Kun’s Obsession With Affordability
NPR Planet Money: Why Coke Cost A Nickel For 70 Years
SoraNews24: Makers of Frozen Snack Apologize for 9-Cent Price Increase
