日清食品 | カップヌードル 担担 ザクザクコリコリ | 2023
Tantan and Dadan Sound Pretty Close, Right? / Cup Noodle "Tantan Zakuzaku Korikori"
Kinnikun comes bursting out of a swamp shouting "Tantaaan!" In his hands, a giant "Cup Noodle Tantan" — and as he charges forward he thrusts his hips while yelling "Zakuzaku! Korikori!" It's a spot-on parody of a legendary commercial from the 1990s, and people in their forties reacted to it all at once.
The insight
Nissin's official website explains it simply: "Tantan and Dadan sound pretty close, right? That's basically how we made this." It's a faithful recreation of Pip's nutrition drink "Dadan" commercial from the early 1990s — the swamp entrance, the costume, the poses, even the pitch of the shout — all while having fun with how close the product name "Tantan" sounds to "Dadan." This one ad manages to pull off a neat trick: making people around 40 feel nostalgic while making Gen Z feel like it's something brand new.
The idea
The product itself is a tantan soup packed with crunchy texture — cashew nuts for the "zakuzaku" crunch and pickled mustard greens for the "korikori" bite. The plan was to build instant awareness of that through sheer visual impact: Kinnikun's muscles and his dramatic swamp entrance. Nakayama Kinnikun can work with any product, and his real strength shows here too — any brand's message holds up once it's bent into his particular style.
What happened
Online, people were buzzing: "Did they actually get permission for this?!", "Classic Nissin", "This is peak nostalgia bait for middle-aged guys." People called it "shocking" and said the parody was put together so simply and well that there's "nothing more to say" about it.
Afterthought
The comment that "since the whole point was just to make people notice that Tantan exists, there's nothing more that needs doing" really nails it — and I think that boldness is exactly Nissin's strength. Apparently Nissin's PR department has only 25 people planning promotions for every single product in-house, so they must have a setup where they can instantly greenlight an idea like "the names sound alike, let's just go for it." That's probably where this speed and sharpness comes from. There isn't much information out there about it, but maybe that's exactly why "Tantaaan!" sticks in people's heads. And honestly, that's enough.
