Showing posts with label swag. Show all posts
Showing posts with label swag. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Random Picture #211

Pocky products on display that were eligible for the promotion - these are mostly variations on green tea.

In my post about Nijiya Japanese market, one of the things that I was told and forgot to mention was that the shop is often offered promotional items, but they are so small that they have no chance to display them. During a festival in San Jose, the Nikkei festival, they made an effort to get those items out where customers could see them.


If you look behind the blurred picture of my husband holding an inflated Pocky stick, you can see three enormous reproductions of boxes of Pocky and Glico's Pejoy. I hadn't even noticed those boxes until after I'd taken this picture as I was focusing on the sticks themselves. There was a sign at the check-out counter which said that you got "free Pocky swag" if you bought three or more boxes of Pocky. My husband is holding a sample of said swag.


Obviously, the swag are leftover inflated sticks from the display that you can see behind them. No, they weren't going to climb up and take a stick out of the display. There was a trash bag with the leftovers sitting next to a shelf with stock and in front of a refrigerator case. While hardly an elegant presentation, at least it made it easy fro them to tell us what the swag was. That made it all the easier for me to decide it wasn't worth buying three boxes of Pocky, particularly since I've never been the world's greatest Pocky fan anyway.

I'm curious about whether or not my readers would want this sort of collectible item. Would you buy three boxes of Pocky (at $1.69 each/about 170 yen) just to get one of these tubes?

Friday, January 1, 2010

Variety Friday: Gokaku Mug KitKat


On December 21, Nestle released this package deal of a KitKat, packet of instant Nescafe Excella coffee and a 5-sided red mug as part of their "support the students" campaign. Like the Milk Coffee KitKat, this carries the symbols and cherry blossom motif for all items marketed as gifts meant to encourage students to do well on their entrance examinations.


The mug has 5 sides and I believe that the Chinese characters (kanji) are a play on words that represent luck. This is why the mug is five-sided. The mug is the size of an average coffee cup and not some dinky affair. It's definitely built for use rather than novelty if you set aside the unusual shape. It's also quite solid and thick.

The combination of the full-size regular KitKat, single serving packet of instant coffee, and mug is only 200 yen ($2.18). This represents quite excellent value because the KitKat itself sells for 100 yen and most plain coffee cups (of smaller size, but similar quality) are about 100 yen as well. My guess is that Nestle Japan regards these more as promotional tools than as a premium money maker. I guess having a bunch of tired students who have been studying a lot drinking out of a KitKat and Nescafe mug that might inspire them to seek a sugar and caffeine rush seems like a pretty good idea.