When Cup Noodle released its Mystery Meat Festival noodles last year to celebrate its 45th anniversary, fans of the ubiquitous instant noodles were surprised by Nissin's bold move. After all, for the past 45 years since it first appeared on store shelves, all it took for customers was a cursory glance at the ingredients list to realize that Cup Noodles original flavor contained pork.

And yet, the tasty pieces of protein floating in their cups clearly contained other ingredients which were not yet identified. For the company to embrace the "mystery factor" and make it into a selling point created a renewed interest in the true identity of this "mystery meat."

Since last year, Nissin has undoubtedly enjoyed the success of their new campaign and felt the suspense mount as fans continued to speculate about the identity of their meat.

Well, fans need to wait no longer.

A just-announced cross-promotion for Cup Noodle and the ever-popular anime/manga Great Detective Conan (or Case Closed), hints at an end to the suspense...

Nissin's tweet announcing the promotion shows us Hanzawa the criminal, whose identity is always shrouded in mystery. With a maniacal smile, he warns us that he will never let the identity of the meat be known. And yet, the message along the side proclaims that the mystery will finally be revealed. Will we know? Will we not?

Those who venture to click on the special website are rewarded with a manga in which Hanzawa infiltrates the Nissin headquarters under the guise of an employee. Faced with instructions from his boss on a new campaign in which the identity of the mystery meat will be completely unveiled, he exclaims in disbelief: "Reveal the identity of the mystery meat? No way! And so casually? They've gotta be kidding!"

You can learn all the details of the story for yourself if you visit the site.

Suffice it to say that after a startling turn of events and an explosive climax, the manga finally ... spills the beans (literally).

With his dying breath, we see the boss spelling out the following message...

...meat and soy beans!

Mystery solved, case closed.

So, confident in the knowledge that we are truly informed consumers, we can all go back to enjoying hot steaming bowls of Cup Noodles!