Taiwan beverage aisles are full of __________-milk drinks. Melon milk, apple milk, papaya milk, and so on. A recent craze is banana milk. It's the one you see in the picture and it's uber expensive because it's imported from Korea.
It has really grown in popularity, it started off only in import stores, then at costco, and has spread so far that it's in convenience stores. Besides the shock that Taiwanese would support anything Korean, is the surprise that so far, there are not any Taiwanese knockoffs yet. I guess it's still a little two new, but i'm sure there will be many different brands of banana milk on the shelves within a month.
It's also a bit surprising to see banana milk being popular at all. I have met a few Taiwanese who don't like bananas and for many the idea of a banana milk seems scary. On top of this, bananas are basically free in Taiwan, so anybody could make some real banana milk very cheaply and easily. All meaning that for this to become such a craze, some company must have decided to tell people that this brand is popular, so it instantly became popular.
On a final note, there are some strawberry drinks around but they are pretty terrible. However whenever someone from the states sends me some strawberry powder, i have friends lining up at the door to have some strawberry milk. If only Nestle would decide to make a campaign here to tell people that it's super popular and then pay a group of Taiwanese to line up in front of a store to buy it. They'd sell tons of that powder.
