Asahi has introduced what it calls the world's first canned "red eye", which is a happoshu beer and tomato juice mix. It is only on sale for a limited time and only in convenience stores. They are also giving away 2 can sets to 300 members of their online web service.
The English on the label goes "Asahi Red Eye's silky flavor and refreshing aftertaste goes well with food." and "This product is made from selected tomatoes and alcoholic beverage brewed from finest malt." The Japanese goes "太陽の恵みたっぷり トマトと麦のお酒" which roughly means "Full of goodness from the sun, a tomato and barley alcoholic beverage." This product contains 20% tomato juice.
I had not been aware that there was a drink called the "red eye", but a quick search clearly shows that to be the case. I bought a can and tried it. Interesting taste and not at all bad. It probably does go well with food. I cannot say I will buy it again, but applaud the effort on Asahi's part.
http://www.asahibeer.co.jp/redeye/cp/120529-120625/index.html
Photo is a web capture for explanatory purposes, copyright belongs to the company.
This is not easy to completely figure out. Meiji Fruit Juice Gumi is sponsoring a Twitter event where people tweet to help complete an online story or game. The characters in the game need people's help in order to progress to different stages. The instructions also explain that tweets can be used to create boats and other items in the virtual world. I am not much into such things, but it does appear pretty elaborate for a product promotion.
The characters' names are Megumi and Taiyo (メグミとタイヨウ), both of which relate to the product (the gumi of Megumi and Taiyo means sun and is thus related to fruit). The game is called Tweet Fantasy or Time Line World (タイムラインワールド) and since I cannot see other mentions of it online, I have to conclude that it is not a cross promotion, with a game for example, and was actually developed for this promotion.
http://www.meiji.co.jp/sweets/candy_gum/fruits_gummi/
Photo is a web capture for explanatory purposes, copyright belongs to the company.
McDonald's had a limited edition Tuna Muffin on the menu.
http://www.mcdonalds.co.jp/campaign/morning/250yen.html
Photo is a web capture for explanatory purposes, copyright belongs to the company.
Sort but interesting article on the origin of the iconic Kikkoman soy sauce dispenser.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/17/magazine/who-made-that-soy-sauce-dispenser.html
Asahi promotes its Wonda line of canned coffees by holding AKB48 Wondaful Races. The 29th such race was held at the end of May. AKB48 is a girls group created in and named after the Akihabara area of Tokyo. They have 64 members and in these "races", which appear to be online games, the group breaks up into 10 teams of 5 (not sure about the remaining 14 members) and compete against one another. Several of us tried to figure out what was going on, and it appears the more fans one team has the faster that team's car goes and the race lasts 24 hours. Fans of the winning team have chances at prizes which include Wonda projection clocks (projects a clock face on a nearby wall). It does not sound all that exciting to me, but when the target market is men and the contestants are cute girls, I suppose it draws attention and that's the point.
https://wonda-akb48.com/top.go?sd=18537
Photo is a web capture for explanatory purposes, copyright belongs to the company.
