MR．BRAIN 脳トレパン

The inspirations of co-branding can take the consumer down strange and winding roads. One of the more absurd, and thus ultimately clever ideas has come from the folks who inspired the title of this blog, the Yamazaki Baking Company.

The article in question is the Mr. Brain Nou Torepan (MR．BRAIN　脳トレパン). As far as I can tell, there's a clever bit of punstery going on with the name. In my own misreading it looks like MR. BRAIN brain trepan, or Mr. Brain's brain core (the meaning of trepan). But of course, pan means bread, so trepan and pan become a bit conflated and one's left stumped and mystified as to what's really going on here.*

The bun actually looks a little like the remains of a cranial trepanning. A disc of bread with a bumpy brain-like texture on the top. As if you got a decent cross section of skull material with a soupçon of cortex attached. Inside a a layer of caramel chocolate cream topped and another of whipped cream. And beyond that is the addition of DHA (docosahexaenoic acid), a popular fad chemical that supposed to be good for memory retention and a counter for alzheimer's disease. All well and good. But why?

The why is the co-branding with a new TV show, MR. BRAIN. Simultaneously with the release of the bun last month was the premiere of the new TV show, in which TV superstar and pop group SMAP member, Takuya Kimura, plays a gigolo who suffers a brain injury and becomes a crime-solving sleuth. Both the TV program and the junk food seem a little half-baked in concept, but in the first couple weeks of being on air, MR. BRAIN got upwards of 25% viewership. Smarter than I thought!

There are no records of the popularity of the baked good - it's a rather cloying and heavy puck of dough and filler - but I imagine after buying one for a sample, one will be a little smarter the next time walking down the grocery store aisle and will reach for something else instead.

* It has been brought to my attention by Rachel (see comment below - Thanks!), that yes, I really did misread the meaning of name of this product. It actually means "Mr. Brain brain training bread." However, I do like to think that some serious double-entendre was in action while they were deciding what to call the damn thing.