沒魚蝦也好: Edible iPhone treats selling like hot cakes

Edible iPhone treats selling like hot cakes

BY ASAKO HANAFUSA STAFF WRITER

2010/12/27

Apple Inc.'s iPhone 3GS, left, and an iPhone cookie sold at bakery Green Gables (Asako Hanafusa)Kumiko Kudo making cookies (Asako Hanafusa)

TOKUSHIMA--Hand-made chocolate cookies in the shape of the iPhone have become the latest must-have accessory for the tech-savvy gourmet.

The biscuits, which are about 12 centimeters long and 6 cm wide, are made by Kumiko Kudo, the 44-year-old owner of bakery Green Gables in Aizumi town, Tokushima Prefecture, replicating Apple Inc.'s iconic device on a chocolate base, with icons nicely drawn in red, green and blue icing.

Kudo said the idea for the biscuits came from one of her customers, who asked her to make a look-a-like of the iPod touch media player for her husband's birthday gift in October 2008.

Kudo mistook the gadget for the very similar iPhone, which had just appeared on the market, but the customer was delighted by the end product.

News of Kudo's creation did not spread widely until a message on the Internet micro-blogging site Twitter in January by the well-known economic critic Kazuyo Katsuma.

A few days before a 42-year-old female company worker in Tokyo had seen the iPhone cookie on the blog of Kudo's bakery and had ordered two to give to Katsuma and singer Komi Hirose, who coauthored a book on Twitter.

Katsuma immediately posted a message on Twitter heralding the "amazing iPhone cookie." Hirose also posted a message about the "edible iPhone."

Their many followers read the messages and news of the cookie spread quickly. Orders began to pour in.

When Kudo was invited to an event held by Softbank Corp. in March, she handed President Masayoshi Son one of biscuits, who had earlier posted his own Twitter message saying: "I want one!" Son was overjoyed: "I'm so happy. I cannot possibly eat this," he said.

Kudo, who makes all her own cakes and biscuits, says she can create no more than 20 iPhone cookies a day. One biscuit is priced at 2,730 yen ($33), including tax.

Kudo has received requests for iPad cookies. She said she has experimented, but "it turned out to be too big, heavy and difficult to make."