In the fast-iterating snack food market, leading a trend is already difficult. However, one company has defined and reshaped the boundaries of the jelly category three times over more than two decades. The development history of Crayon Shin-chan Leisure Food Group is a veritable innovation evolution history of China's jelly industry, making it a true pioneer and game-changer. Its innovation journey has not been achieved overnight but is a systematic transformation that starts with form, matures with value, and looks to the future. Let's use three key years as anchors to decode how this company, as a 'thinker' and 'strategist', has built a cross-cycle 'product innovation chronicle'.

2000-2003: Pioneering 'Jelly Strips' and 'Yidu Fruit Bar' Products Reshaping the New Form of Jelly Consumption At the beginning of the millennium, the snack food market was on the rise, and consumers, especially young people and children, shifted their demand for snacks towards 'convenience, sharing, and fun'. At that time, the jelly market was dominated by traditional cup-packed products, with limited consumption scenarios. Crayon Shin-chan keenly captured the market gap and took the lead in form innovation:

  • Pioneered strip-shaped, suckable 'Jelly Strips', changing the way of consumption—no utensils needed, just open and suck, full of fun. Jelly Strips
  • Pioneered 'Yidu Fruit Bar' for children to hold and eat, fitting children's habits. Yidu Fruit Bar This innovation had a profound impact: it redefined the consumption scenarios of jelly, integrating it into diverse settings such as outdoor activities, travel, and recess, successfully opening up a new track of 'portable jelly', transforming jelly from a 'dessert' to a high-frequency 'snack', and unleashing huge market potential. This is not only the starting point of Crayon Shin-chan's innovation path but also demonstrates its market insight of opening new growth dimensions for the industry through form innovation.

2011-2023: Defining 'Whole Fruit Pulp' and Setting Quality Benchmark After leading the portable trend, Crayon Shin-chan did not stop at form innovation but turned its attention to the deep reconstruction of product value. How to rejuvenate traditional cup-packed jelly and achieve a value leap from 'snack' to 'dessert'? Its core strategy was to return to the essence and redefine the standard of good jelly with 'real ingredients'.

  • First Green Plum: In 2011, launched the first green plum jelly, pioneering the embedding of a whole green plum into jelly, setting a quality benchmark of 'what you see is what you get' with real fruit pits and sweet-sour flavor, creating a strong market memory point. Green Plum Jelly
  • First Strawberry: In 2023, Crayon Shin-chan launched a whole strawberry jelly, creating a milestone super single product in the industry, pushing the 'whole fruit pulp' concept to a climax, and driving the formation of a strong matrix with flavors like hawthorn and green grape. Whole Fruit Series This move had a profound impact on the industry; 'visible whole fruit pulp' has become the golden standard for consumers to measure jelly quality. At the same time, to achieve the perfect presentation of 'whole fruit', it promoted systematic upgrades in fruit processing, filling, and preservation technologies across the industry. Through this content revolution, Crayon Shin-chan successfully built a solid brand moat.

2014-Present: Technological Value Revolution, Infusing 'Fruit and Vegetable Probiotics' Moving Towards a Functional Future With the awakening of health awareness, 'functional snacks' have become a trend. Crayon Shin-chan once again made forward-looking arrangements, pointing innovation at the technological core, promoting jelly from 'satisfying taste and vision' to 'creating health value'. In 2014, it was the first to apply fruit and vegetable probiotic fermentation technology to jelly products, and also the first to apply this technology to jelly. From the early probiotic fermented juice jelly to the daily fruit and vegetable jelly and fruit and vegetable popping boba jelly launched in 2023, it achieved a strategic upgrade from leisure snacks to functional healthy snacks. This strategic move precisely aligns with modern health consumption trends and once again leads the industry in a new direction. Probiotic Fermented Juice Jelly, Daily Fruit and Vegetable Jelly, Fruit and Vegetable Popping Boba Jelly

Innovation Extension Always on the Way: Flavor Breaking Boundaries—The Infinite Imagination of the 'Whole Fruit' Series On the basis of consolidating core value, Crayon Shin-chan extends innovation from 'technology-driven' to 'experience-driven' through bold flavor breaking, continuously exploring the boundaries of the category. Salty Flavor Breakthrough: Based on the 'whole fruit' process, Crayon Shin-chan launched creative flavor jellies such as 'Whole Garlic Jelly' and 'Whole Pickled Pepper Jelly' in 2024, opening a new track of 'salty jelly'. Whole Garlic, Pickled Pepper Visual Innovation: In 2025, its launch of 'Whole Rose and Ice Lychee' focuses innovation on 'high appearance + creative flavor'. Combining white fungus with whole lychee and infusing rose absolute, it creates a visual and taste experience like a work of art, receiving praise in social media and professional evaluations. Whole Rose Lychee, ITI Award Image These flavor explorations by Crayon Shin-chan not only successfully ignited social communication and enhanced the brand's youthfulness and fashion sense but also proved the strong inclusiveness and innovative vitality of its core process platform, demonstrating to the entire industry the imaginative boundaries of the jelly category that have not yet been reached.

The Gene of an Innovator Looking back at Crayon Shin-chan's development over more than two decades, it has completed three key leaps from 'portability' to 'substantiality' to 'functionality', and continues to explore 'experiential' extensions. The core of its ability to continuously lead the industry and cross cycles lies in the innovation gene deeply rooted in the enterprise:

  • Deep consumer insight: Always able to capture changes in consumption trends in advance and keep pace with every consumption upgrade.
  • Courage to self-revolutionize: Not satisfied with existing success, constantly challenging and subverting its own hit products.
  • Continuous investment in R&D and technology: From form and process to bio-fermentation technology, every front-end innovation has solid back-end support. The case of Crayon Shin-chan provides a model of 'micro-innovation breeding big markets' for the entire leisure food industry. It proves that there is no so-called 'ceiling' for traditional categories; the only limitation is the enterprise's imagination and sustained, systematic, and layered innovation capability. In the future, to be continued... For a 'pioneer' like Crayon Shin-chan, its story is always in the next chapter. The market has reason to expect that it will bring more surprises beyond imagination to consumers and the industry.