Marukawa Soda Marble Bubble Gum

Marukawa Marble Gum comes with a lottery built in.

The brand belongs to the company’s atari-tsuki range — products with a winning ticket inside — and that is the mechanism Japanese dagashi has run on for generations: find the atari mark on your wrapper and the shop gives you another one free.

It costs a few yen, the odds are long, and the ritual of checking is most of the point.

Soda is the flavour, and in Japan that means something specific.

Sōda does not refer to cola or any particular drink but to the clear, blue-tinted soft drink sold at festival stalls and in ramune bottles — a flavour category of its own, understood as bright, sharp and faintly citrus.

Marukawa’s version is mild and sweet rather than aggressive, aimed squarely at children, with the bubble-gum chew lasting well past the flavour.

Each pack holds six marble-shaped pieces, and the character on it is Sōda-mon, Marukawa’s soda mascot.

The company has been making chewing gum in Nagoya since 1954 and is the name behind most of the gum in a Japanese dagashi shop — the small, cheap, brightly packaged kind that a generation here grew up chewing on the way home from school.

About this item
Item Name : Soda Marble Bubble Gum
Brand : Marukawa
Item Form : Gum
Number of Items : 6 Counts (Box of 1)