Japan’s 'One Hand Chips' Are Meant to Be Dumped Right Into Your Mouth

If you’re the type of person who can eat chips without making a mess of your hands, first of all, wow; and second of all, how? In order to write this, I have to lick cheese dust off my fingers because I insist on eating white Cheddar popcorn by hand, during the workday, when I need to type.

The answer is to use chopsticks, according to life hack-dispensing sites (including one that directs this tip towards gamers, who might find themselves dealing with gross, oil-covered controllers). As the Guardian recently reminded us, you can also go the grabby claw direction with a product called the Potato Chip Hand. And Amazon sells “chip finger covers” for the real freaks craving a more direct finger-to-chip connection.

Clearly, this is a preoccupation, and rightly so—nobody wants nasty chip hands. And if you count yourself among those still struggling with greasy smears across your phone and orange stains on your couches and pant legs (hello, Hot Cheetos), a Japanese snack company is rolling out a new product to solve your problems (or, at least, this specific problem). As the Wall Street Journal reported, Koike-ya’s One Hand chips are shards of potato chips, served in a pouch with a rippable corner that’s exactly the right size for pouring those chip bits into your maw.

You might be thinking, “I can do this with any bag of chips.” And you would be correct. But hey, big American chip companies haven’t gotten bold enough yet to tell us to crush and chug our chips, so there’s obviously a niche to be cornered in the market.

As Koike-ya’s chip designers explained to the WSJ, the company was inspired by the tasty stuff at the end of the bag, and wanted to make a product to mimic and optimize the experience of downing the crumbs. But if you’ve ever gone bottoms up with a bag of chips, you know you risk spilling them all on your face. The One Hand chips bag, apparently, prevents that. “We would argue over a millimeter in setting the size of the opening,” a chip designer said .

One Hand chips are gamer-approved. An aspiring professional gamer, who says he used to rely on wet wipes for sanitary in-game snack seshes, told the WSJ, “With One Hand, I can just take it and chug it.”

The One Hand line has been successful enough that it has multiple flavors: Super Nori & Salt, BBQ, and Hot Chili. All of those sound tight, but unfortunately it looks like they’re mostly sold out online.

Good news, however: If it’s the convenience you’re after, you can also just smash a bag of chips, cut a hole in the corner, and pour it down your gullet. Works with any flavor you have…on hand.