BODY: Most Pokémon snacks are bought for the packaging. This one is built around what it leaves out.
The Pokémon Company begins selling Rice Cookie Pokémon Yurutto Strawberry on October 17, priced at ¥1,760 for a tin of eight. The cookies are made with rice flour instead of wheat, and the recipe avoids all 29 ingredients on Japan's allergen labeling list — the eight mandatory ones including wheat, egg, milk, peanut and buckwheat, plus the 21 recommended disclosures covering soy, sesame, nuts and more.
Every individually wrapped cookie carries artwork by illustrator Kanahei, whose soft-lined, minimal-features style has defined the long-running Pokémon Yurutto merchandise line. The tin itself is designed for reuse as a small storage box once the cookies are gone — a detail that matters more than it sounds in a market where packaging often outlives contents.
The product comes out of Pokémon's My First Pokémon Project, an initiative aimed at very young children and the entry points through which they first meet the franchise. Online orders open October 15 at 10:00 a.m. on the Pokémon Center web store, with listings also going live on Amazon, Rakuten, DMM and Yahoo Shopping.
The insider take
Food allergies are handled with unusual seriousness in Japan, and the reason is specific: a 2012 school lunch death in Chōfu, western Tokyo, reshaped how schools, manufacturers and parents treat cross-contamination. Since then, "29品目不使用" — 29 items unused — has become a recognizable shorthand on shelf labels, and a small domestic industry of allergen-free sweets has grown around birthday parties and school events where one child otherwise sits out. That context explains the price. At ¥1,760 for eight cookies, this is not a convenience-store snack; it is priced as omiyage, the gift you bring to someone's home. The real product here is a box a parent can hand over without first interrogating the ingredient list — and Kanahei's art is what makes it read as a treat rather than a medical accommodation.
Originally reported by GAME Watch (Japanese).