Kanro Mojilu Halloween Candy (product information)

Image courtesy of Kanro.

I witnessed the "growth" of Halloween as a holiday in Japan during my years there. Like most foreign holidays, they didn't simply adopt it wholesale, but adapted it to their own sensibilities. Kids don't trick or treat at private homes, but some merchants or shotengai (shopping streets) will hold a special event in which kids can visit shops and get treats or participate in "stamp rallies" (getting a special stamp from various merchants to fill in a booklet or page). 

As the years went by, I saw more and more in the way of Halloween candy and decorations and confectioners got increasingly creative and involved. It started with imported candy or snacks with a Halloween motif, then Japanese snacks had a modest Halloween look and feel, and now there are things which are completely specialized for the holiday. To that end, you can't go any further than the Kanro Mojilu candies.

These packages, which contain bits of hard candy, spell out words in English and include punctuation. Incidentally, "mojilu" almost certainly is the katakana way of saying "module" as in, each letter is a module you can use to build messages. 

One point about this which I'm a little confused about is that this candy does not appear on Kanro's web site (I searched using their search engine as well as hopping around looking for it) and my information says that it's limited to 500 units. I can't believe they're only selling 500 of these, but I guess it's possible. I was released on October 10 and if any of my readers in Japan have seen it on shelves, please let me know. It's possible that this is simply a promotional item that will be distributed to shops and not for sale. Unfortunately, the information I found was pretty vague. This would be a pretty cool find if they are so limited.