What do pork production, an aging Japanese population, and Major League Baseball have to do with HI-CHEW?

H I-CHEW candy has all the indicators of cult status: Ryan Gosling stopped at five bodegas to look for it during a single interview in 2011, calling it “the candy that never quits on you.” The blog Candy Gurus ran a story about it titled “Hi Chews: Starbursts Better Sleep with One Eye Open” in 2012. The Red Sox have been stocking it in their bullpen for almost a decade. And, as if the candy’s status still needed confirming, it got its own Buzzfeed listicle in early 2016: “21 Photos You’ll Understand if You’re Slightly Obsessed With Hi-Chews.”

The candy in question is a little like taffy and a little like gum. Similar to a Starburst, but less sweet and more fruity, it comes wrapped in paper and doesn’t stick to your teeth (that’s a patented trait). Like all great candies, it’s hard to pinpoint why, exactly, the HI-CHEW inspires such loyal fandom. Its acolytes tend to describe it in the abstract: One Amazon reviewer said “discovering Hi-Chew was like finding the answer to a question you never knew you wanted to ask.” Pat McCrory, former Governor of North Carolina, remembered his first time fondly, remarking that “one bite and we were friends for life.” Former Yankees relief pitcher Matt Thornton wondered aloud if it might contain illegally addictive ingredients.

HI-CHEW is really big in Japan, too, where the company is headquartered (in fact, it’s the number one soft candy there). Manufactured by Morinaga & Company, HI-CHEW was invented more than sixty years ago as an alternative to bubble gum. Since it was considered rude to take food out of your mouth in public, Morinaga hoped to develop a socially acceptable sweet that chewed like gum but dissolved like a lozenge. Recipe testers combined caramel with strawberry flavoring and voila—the Chewlet, HI-CHEW’s predecessor, was born.

But until recently, the candy was hard to find in the United States. You could order it on the internet or spot it in Asian specialty groceries, but it had that elusive quality that adds a little glimmer to other imported sweets, like Pocky sticks and Coca-Cola made with real sugar. Like Ryan Gosling himself, HI-CHEW had mystique.

Something’s changed in the last few years. HI-CHEW has been popping up everywhere, from Costco to Wal-Mart. It’s even taken over the coveted checkout line real estate at my neighborhood grocery store. These days, the HI-CHEW is anything but rare.

The candy’s sudden abundance is no accident. The impish forces of globalization that govern Japanese trends, industrial pork production, aging populations, and America’s love for sugar have converged on the HI-CHEW: its makers recently opened a candy factory in Mebane, North Carolina. So if you’re seeing more of it at the movie theatre, it isn’t because Tokyo suddenly quadrupled its exports. By a strange twist of fate, your Japanese candy might actually be locally made.

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The HI-CHEW narrative doesn’t fit in the food story formula we’ve gotten used to reading. It’s not all about small-scale farmers and local food saving the world, nor is it all about Big Food taking advantage of the little guy at the expense of the environment. Sure, it’s about marketing sugar to children and manufacturing processed food, but it’s also about rebuilding a manufacturing sector made vulnerable by the decline of tobacco, and making use of the byproducts of an industrialized food system.

But before all that, it’s about Major League Baseball.

Way back in the mid-aughts, Morinaga executives had to confront a problem. Japan’s population was getting older. An aging customer base meant the candy company had two choices: start marketing to older folks, or find new, younger customers overseas. Faced with the prospect of dwindling sales, Morinaga started looking to China, Southeast Asia, and the U.S. for new HI-CHEWers.

The company soon opened a marketing and distribution office in Southern California. Taking on the consolidated mainstream candy market wasn’t going to be easy—Mars alone owns Starburst, Skittles, Orbit gum, Juicy Fruit, and Altoids in addition to its chocolate brands. Morinaga America, the company’s U.S. office, was up against decades of relationship building history between Big Candy and the groceries, movie theatres, and dollar stores of the world.