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:

Star Wars Kirin drinks in Japan

The Star Wars boom continues in Japan. To be honest, the marketing wave hasn't been too bombastic (yet). Instead of seeing overwhelming waves of products at a single store, they seem to be spread around a bit - a few baked goods here, a few sweets here, some toys there.

Star Wars licensing and food & drink products have gone hand in glove since the beginning. Recently in Japan, Kirin has launched a series of drinks. Here are pics of some I recently spotted in Tokyo.

Mets

This is a type of carbonated soda, I think. The Star Wars villains have red-themed packaging labeled Red Force, while the heroes make up the Blue Force.

 More after the jump:

Vintage Japanese Bootleg Packaging Variants

In general, toy packaging from the 1970s is an interesting area to learn about. A cool subset is bootleg figures. I guess they figured that in order to attract kids, they'd need to put together nice header cards, and sometimes even backing cards.

This is a collection of bootleg Inazuman figures from the 1970s. The sculpts are nearly identical, but in addition to paint variants (which is an interesting area in its own right), a variety of header cards were used.

Here are close-up looks at each figure and its header:

The header says "Transparent Kaiju Series" which is a riff on the Bullmark Ultraman kaiju series.

 More after the jump:

Star Wars x Ginza Cozy Corner Japanese Cookies, Cakes, and more!

In anticipation of the new film, the Star Wars marketing machine in Japan is now in full effect. Recently, a chain of dessert shops called Ginza Cozy Corner has released a slew of licensed Star Wars tie in desserts.
 

They have two types of desserts: freshly made and packaged. First, here's a look at the cakes, puddings, and other goodies in the refrigerated display cases.

This is a lot of 9 Star Wars themed cakes.

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