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The Taiwanese ‘good luck’ snack

laowai 88888888 on Twitter: "Utterly fascinated by "Kuai Kuai culture" in  Taiwan, where green-colored bags of the snack brand Kuai Kuai (乖乖) are  placed on or near computers/machines because it is believed this can help stop the device from breaking down.

Give a Taiwanese machine a packet of crisps and see what happens:

No one is entirely sure exactly when or how the green bags of Kuai Kuai crisps became seen as symbolic tech whisperers whose mere presence could keep electronics in line. The Kuai Kuai company was established in 1968 by Liao Jing Gang and his son Spencer, a team who needed to find a way to keep their main business, a pharmaceutical importing and manufacturing company, busy during slow periods, so they began making snacks and confectionery.

“Kuai Kuai were specifically created to be sold to children. Back then, there was nothing like that on the market,” says Irene Liao, who is Spencer’s daughter and the firm’s current general manager. But that all changed when the crisps, whose name means ‘behave’ or ‘be good’ in both Mandarin and Taiwanese, caught the eye of a graduate student.

Category: Food & Drink, Tech // Tagged: ,

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