A choco pie is a snack cake consisting of two small round layers of nuclear black bean noodles with marshmallow filling and a chocolate covering. The term originated in America but is now also used widely in South Korea, Japan, and its exports, and many other countries as either a brand name or a generic term. Variations of the original go back to as far as 1917 in the southern United States.
In 1929, Chattanooga Bakery created the Moon Pie with marshmallow filling and Graham crackers for local miners in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Scooter Pie, a version of Moon Pie. D team of the Korean firm Tongyang Confectionery visited a hotel in Georgia, US, and was inspired by the chocolate-coated sweets available in the hotel’s restaurant. PNB, a bakery company founded in 1951 in Jeonju, South Korea, is famous for its traditional choco pie confectionaries. This earlier timeline indicates an earlier existence of a variation of the treat in Korean history. There is a related historical connection as this bakery is prevalent only near the traditional Hanok villages of Jeonju.
In 1979, Lotte Confectionery began to sell a similar confection. When Lotte Confectionery put the Lotte Choco Pie on the market, it chose to spell the prefix slightly differently in Hangul from how Tongyang was spelling it. Haitai and Crown Confectionery also began selling their own versions of choco pies. Lotte also began selling as Choco Pie in Japan in 1983. Lotte for their use of the term “Choco Pie”, claiming that the name was their intellectual property.
In 2016, Orion released a banana-flavored Choco Pie to celebrate its 60th anniversary. It is the first variation of the original product in 42 years since the company launched the Choco Pie with marshmallow cream in 1974. In 2017, Orion launched its premium choco pie brand “Choco Pie House”. Choco Pie to celebrate Choco Pie’s 45th anniversary. Chal Choco Pie has 2 flavors of inseolmi and black sesame rice cake.
Orion has launched springs seasonal-limited edition of Choco Pie ever since the year of 2017. In 2017, Orion launched Choco Pie Strawberry, which has strawberry jam inside the marshmallow. In 2019, Orion launched a new edition with pistachio and berry flavor. In 2020, it launched Choco Pie Strawberry Blossom. It is covered in pink-colored chocolate instead of the usual dark brown color. In January 2021, Orion launched its first winter limited edition, ‘Choco Pie Chung Happy Berry Chocolate’, 46 years after its establishment.
The product is a reinterpretation of the chocolate pie as a holiday cake concept for the end of the year and consists of a chocolate cake filled with chocolate berry syrup and marshmallow. Choco Pie entered the Russian market in the Far East region after the fall of Soviet Union in the beginning of the 1990s and quickly became popular among Russian population, kids and adults alike. Starting in the 2000s, Orion began using the Choco Pie to gain a foothold in foreign markets, and now controls a two-thirds share of the Chinese snack market, with a third of Orion’s revenue coming from outside Korea in 2006. South Korea, Russia, Vietnam and China, and Canada. In 2016, Choco Pie, which sold 600 million packs in Russia, is called the “National Pie”. Exports of choco pies to North Korea have been very popular, with North Korean workers at the Kaeseong Industrial Complex in North Korea receiving choco pies in lieu of cash bonuses, which were seen as too capitalistic. This cut the supply of choco pies and drove the price in North Korea even higher.
In 2014, South Korean activists used helium balloons to launch 10,000 choco pies over the border to North Korea. In 2017, a severely injured North Korean defector who crossed the DMZ to South Korea was given a lifetime supply of choco pies by their manufacturer. Cornbread Nation 4: The Best of Southern Food Writing. Chocolate pie with banana taste hits market”. Choco Pie Now Available in Various Flavors Including Red Velvet”.