Star Wars in Japan - 7-11 Lottery Prize Stand

There's no doubt about it. The Star Wars boom is in full force in Japan. At just about every store you go to, there's a branded item or promotion going on. I even saw a Shlick razor POP at a hardware store. Each razor came with a little plastic attachment shaped like a character.

A more interesting display I came across today was at a 7-11. They regularly run lottery promotions, tied to anime, video games, and so on. The way it works is you get a little voucher, bring it to the counter, and pay whatever it costs. (In this case, it's 620 yen per voucher, which is fairly expensive for these promotions.) Then you pull a ticket out of the box, look at your letter, and choose a prize in that category.

Here is the range of prizes.

 Some prize closeups:

The biggest prizes - "A" and "B".

 More after the jump:

The "D" prize is one of two posters.

The other "D" - a cool poster with images of all three original trilogy posters.

One of the "G" prizes - plastic posters/mats.

Mini glasses and other small prizes.

I think these tea towels are the smallest prizes.

Prize coupon holder

Here's mine

Ticket box

Unopened ticket

I pulled a "G" and chose this. It's a fairly large plastic poster/mat. What's really cool are the vintage graphics. An interesting note is the text: Guerra Delle Stelle, which means "Star Wars" in Italian! You have to wonder what image archive they chose this from and how they decided on using Italian text. Combined with the Japanese packaging from the new movie, it's quite a grouping!

I know my posts have been very Star Wars-y lately, but I think it's fun to be in the middle of one of these "booms" that come around every so often, and I wanted to document how it's unfolding. It's interesting to see the year-long build up, especially when things ramp up significantly in the weeks leading up to the film.