BODY: Japan's most disarmingly cute characters are now riding on its most nostalgic snack. Starting today, June 15, Oyatsu Company is selling Chiikawa Baby Star Ramen (Tan-Shio Flavor) nationwide as a limited-time release — a crunchy collision of two beloved Japanese icons.
Baby Star Ramen is a decades-old staple: a bag of pre-fried, seasoned instant-noodle bits eaten dry as a snack. For this collaboration, the flavor is tan-shio — the salted, lemony beef-tongue seasoning familiar to anyone who's worked a Japanese yakiniku grill. It's a playful nod to grown-up tastes wrapped in childhood packaging.
The hook for fans, of course, is the artwork. The snack ships in two collectible package designs featuring the Chiikawa cast — the tiny white creature Chiikawa, the cat-eared Hachiware, and the perpetually anxious Usagi — rendered in Nagano's signature soft, wobbly style. Collectors will likely want both.
Pricing is "open" (set by retailers), with an expected shelf price of around ¥152 (roughly $1). As a limited-time item, it's the kind of thing that vanishes from convenience-store shelves quickly once Chiikawa devotees catch on.
The insider take
Chiikawa collaborations have become a reliable engine of Japanese retail FOMO, and Oyatsu Company knows exactly what it's doing pairing the franchise with Baby Star — a brand that already trades heavily on nostalgia. Here in Tokyo, character-snack tie-ins like this rarely last their full "limited" window; expect resellers to flood Mercari within days, and don't be surprised if the tan-shio flavor itself becomes a talking point. It's a genuinely Sendai-coded choice (beef tongue is the city's signature dish), which gives the whole thing a wink that older buyers will appreciate even as kids reach for the cute bag.
Originally reported by GAME Watch (Japanese).