Recently there are Cassava Chips craze here in Jogja and several towns in Indonesia. It’s not an ordinary cassava chips; it’s a super hot chili cassava chips named Ma Icih (Ma means Madame). The transparent plastic bags of the chips even turn into dark red color, because the amount of the chilies used for the chips is unimaginable. Actually they hava 10 different level of spiciness: 1 as spicy-for-beginner; 5 as moderately-super-spicy; and 10 as… hellish spicy. So I’ve tried the Level 5 and I really like it. It tasted like, hmm, you eat a chips together with 20 jalapenos and other spices. It tasted great, all the saltiness and spiciness blended perfectly. I’m not sure about level 10 though, I think I would really risk my health and my body if I tried that one.
But no, the most unique part of Ma Icih chips is not even in its spiciness, but its marketing mechanism. The distributors of Ma Icih are not ordinary chain store or stall. Anyone interested to be a distributor should apply to the producer (its produced in Bandung). The way to advertise the chips is through its official twitter account. The chips seller would appear randomly in any place, and the twitter account will announce the place where the seller stand by for two or three hours. For example, “Today in Jogja the agent will stay in XYZ street no.15 at 2 PM – 4 PM. Come!”.
And you know what, it always sold out that way! My friend come three hour after the announcement and she wasn’t lucky, the person before her become the last buyer of the chips. I think, the rarity of the snack itself that made people so eager to always find the chips. You know, you feel good when you are able to grab something that are hard-to-get.
Coming from a chili lover region, I’ve already familiar with the chili cassava since I was in junior high school. I used to buy similar (but kinda different too) chili chips from school canteen. Every time I went home to my hometown, I always try to find the chips and have it as a snack.
No it's not Ma Icih, it's the other chili cassava chips.
My friends and me once thought about bringing the chips and re-sell it to others, but then we thought Jogjanese who doesn’t really like spicy food would not that interested to the chips. We forgot to analyze several things.
First, people live in Jogja are not only Jogjanese, a lot of students gather from every region in Indonesia, including people from spice-lover region. Second, the Jogjaness also experiencing changing food taste, since they are exposed to various kinds of foods from others, therefore they are more tolerant toward spicy food now. But more importantly, the young generation here is really curious, up-to-date, and always follow recent trend. Ma Icih chips is no longer a snack. It’s a symbol of exclusivity, glorified by the social networking site and mouth-to-mouth marketing mechanism.
Now the question is how long this cassava craze will last.
Weeks before, there was a Magnum craze also in many cities here. The point was, the delicious ice stick was advertise a lot in the television, but apparently the stock of the ice cream in the stores were very few… the ice cream become a rare commodity and everyone really want to have it. Stores that were able to have the stock would increase the price significantly. After several weeks, the stock were increasing but then it become overstock and everyone are not really eager to buy it anymore… I call it Magnum bubble then…
As for me, I will always love chili food so I will keep buy the chips, not as often as I want though…
