Pocky Day

History

Pocky came first, in 1966. Glico's own hundred-year corporate history records that the product was initially handmade, that during test sales it was called Choco-teck until the company found that name was already trademarked, and that it was then renamed Pocky after the sound it makes when eaten.

The day came thirty-three years later. The 1999 entry in that corporate history reads, of Pocky & Pretz Day: "This day was established in honor of the shape of the products and certified by the Japan Anniversary Association." Glico's American site tells the same story but names a different body, saying the day was "Officially recognized by the Japan Holiday Association," and dates it to November 11, 1999. The two Glico pages disagree, and this page follows the corporate history: the Japan Anniversary Association does list Pocky & Pretz Day under November 11 among its certified anniversaries, which matches that version. The association's own entry page for the day would not load, so the 1999 registration is Glico's claim rather than the registry's.

It is worth noting what Glico does not say. Neither page spells out the four-ones reasoning everyone repeats. The corporate history says only that the day honors the shape of the products; the American page says the number 1 symbolizes the Pocky stick. Guinness World Records, writing about its own dealings with the brand, puts it most directly: Japanese consumers "crowned the 11th November as Pocky and Pretz Day with the date - 11.11 - representing their iconic shape."

What the day became is better documented than what founded it. In 2012 Glico launched a campaign called Let's Share 11.11, built around an online platform called Pocky Creators that Guinness credits with 3 million views. On November 11, 2013 the company took a Guinness World Records title for the most mentions of a brand name on Twitter in 24 hours, at 3,710,044. It added another in 2014 for the largest online photo montage of cookies or biscuits, with 16,825 photographs. In 2020 Guinness certified Pocky as the largest chocolate-coated biscuit brand by global sales, on an estimate Glico footnotes as $589,900,000 for 2019 and credits to market research rather than its own accounts.

How to observe

Eat the other half of the holiday. The Japanese name is Pocky & Pretz Day, and Pretz, the second Glico biscuit stick in that name, rarely leaves Japan. If a nearby Japanese or Korean grocer carries both, the pairing is the whole point of the day's name.

Read the record rather than the advertising. Guinness World Records publishes its own account of the 2012 to 2014 campaigns, a candid description of how a company turns a date into a measurable event.

And share them. The campaign that built the day was called Let's Share 11.11, and the record it set was a count of how many people said the name on the same day.