Corn in banana chocolate • The Register
SK hynix has launched HBM-themed square corn snacks at 7-Eleven, because nothing explains bandwidth like carbs and chocolate.
The South Korean memory giant, best known for dominating the high-bandwidth memory (HBM) market, has partnered with the US retailer to release “Honey Banana Mat HBM Chips,” a memory chip-themed snack that tastes nothing like NAND flash and everything like a corporate mood shift.
The edible chips take the form of honey-banana-flavored chocolate layered over savory, square-cut corn chips meant to resemble integrated circuits. The companies were clear on at least one point: both the name and the flavor were engineered to make customers think of high-bandwidth memory, an achievement in brand signaling previously thought impossible without PowerPoint.
Sentences about helping consumers “feel closer to semiconductors” usually precede a new education campaign, but this time the lesson plan is snack-aisle-compatible. Rather than diagrams or explainer videos, familiarity is cultivated through dessert-adjacent corn puffs optimized for visual similarity to a CPU package – except smaller, sweeter, and a lot less export-controlled.
To spice things up (or sweeten, arguably), SK hynix and 7-Eleven will run a prize drawing event: consumers open their snack packet, peel off the sticker on the back, find the number printed behind it, and enter that number on the 7-Eleven app’s event page. Behind this looms a pool of 1,500 prizes, including a single grand prize of ten don of pure gold. “Don,” for those unfamiliar, is a traditional Korean unit of gold weight equivalent to 3.75 grams.
As though the chips themselves weren’t immediately collectible, the companies also confirmed HBM character figures will debut in December, described by its makers as humanoid robots conceptually equipped with the latest HBM. The intent, as stated by SK hynix, is for consumers “to naturally associate semiconductors and our company with the joyful experience of eating snacks.”
If you’ve ever wanted evidence that semiconductor marketing has escaped the lab and wandered, bleary-eyed, into a convenience store aisle, this is it: a sticker-redemption gold raffle built around pseudo-silicon corn squares, and, coming soon, HBM humanoids.
SK hynix isn’t the first chip giant to wander into snack propaganda. TSMC, its chief silicon rival, also released a limited-edition chip last year: coconut-flavored corn puffs.
Whether this PR stunt brings the public meaningfully closer to memory architecture or simply closer to the snack aisle remains unanswered, but SK hynix has at least ensured one form of chip dependence is undeniable. ®
