Japan Invents Butter And Cherry Blossom Potato Chips

Now that January is behind us, it's time for the world to start looking forward to Valentine's Day, and also to spring, and some Japanese snack makers are ready to go with a new type of potato chip that tastes like butter and flowers.

According to Rocket News 24, Calbee's new Sweet Sakura Butter potato chips are flavored with butter and cherry blossoms. Cherry blossoms are a popular candy flavoring in the spring, when the cherry blossoms bloom. The flavor of cherry blossoms is delicate and floral, so it's an unconventional choice for a potato chip, but unconventional can be good.

The new chips are a limited edition flavor released for spring as part of Calbee's "The Taste of Japan" line, which highlights traditional Japanese flavors that are a bit unconventional when applied to potato chips. Other items in the lineup include wasabi flavored potato chips, which sound pretty good and not that unusual, and also butter and seasoned cod roe potato chips, which definitely are a bit more out of the ordinary.

The chips sell for $1 a bag and will be rolled out on February 1 in Kyushu, the southernmost of Japan's main islands, and Shikoku, the smallest of Japan's islands, on February 22. They won't officially be offered for sale anyplace else, but chances seem good that a few errant bags will make their way onto the Internet for people who do not live on those islands and are willing to pay a bit of a markup for flower-flavored potato chips.