“People started sending production-related jokes in group conversations when I started watching it,” a client surnamed Li told AFP. “It’s fast-paced and therefore quite exciting,” he said.
After buying the candy, Li and his friend filmed themselves emulating a challenge from the series in which the characters must cut out shapes on the candy without breaking it.
The squid game ‘, the series of the moment, attracts investors’ glances
The Squid Game centers on a group of outcast and debt-ridden characters who enter a children’s game contest to win 45 million won ($ 38 million, € 33 million). If they are eliminated, they pay for it with their lives.
The ever cunning Chinese manufacturers did not miss the opportunity and they launched into producing costumes and masks of the series that are beginning to flood the country’s digital commerce platforms.
Trader Peng Xiuyang told AFP that his sales grew 30% after putting products of the series on sale.
She didn’t know anything about her until a customer asked her if she sold the black masks worn by the security guards at the deadly contest.
Chinese audiences have managed to bypass internet controls and watch the series, especially through easily accessible illegal download pages.
“Our calculation is that The Squid Game, which is gaining global popularity, is being illegally distributed on some 60 pages in China, “South Korean Ambassador to China Jang Ha-sung said at a recent parliamentary hearing.
Proof that the phenomenon also reached the Asian giant, the label The Squid Game It has reached almost 2 billion views on social media.
In these comments, users comment on how they would overcome the challenges posed in the plot and wonder what a Chinese version of the series would look like.
“It would not pass the censorship if we made a production like this … If it were too violent, it would be withdrawn,” said a netizen.