Hokkaido Microwave popcorn

I am naturally a frugal person. Even as a child. If I didn't think the price matched the item, I wouldn't let my mom pay for it. I would make room for quality but only if quality really blew me away. But over 250 yen for one packet of popcorn seems just ridiculous. Even at the import store down the road, an individual packet of Orval Redenbacher's wouldn't put you out two coins. And I know Orval is tasty. 

Yet still, people really gobbled this up. Not even a week after taking this photo, there were only two packets left in stock. My cheap hiney still couldn't convince itself that this stuff could be that delicious, so I passed up the opportunity to try it. Instead I went home and made a giant pot of stove popped popcorn that cost me only 30 yen. 

It made me think about how Japanese people probably view this. Most likely they are only exposed to popcorn as a treat at the theaters (extremely marked up prices), caramel corn at entrances to kids entertainment places (extremely marked up prices), or the gourmet flavored kettle corns in specialty stores and such. To those people, this probably looked like a steal. The enjoyment of popcorn without the need to go out. *cough*are people even quarantining?*cough*

My broke and in need to quarantine mind instead goes to the question of, can I try and grow my own popping corn? Then I would only be paying whatever time and money it costs to grow it.