Youtube direct link
This has already made the rounds all over th’ Internet, but if you haven’t seen it, it’s worth a watch.
Via Digg, Boing Boing, et al

Product Name: Mayoi-ka
Manufacturer: Yamaei
Retail Price: 105 yen (approx. USD$1)

Concept
Certain flavors just go together. Peanut butter & jelly, sour cream & chives, coffee & doughnuts… and now thanks to Japanese snack manufacturer Yamaei, we can add a new combination to the pantheon: squid & mayonnaise.

How could no one have thought of it before? The marketing campaign practically writes itself, a la those old Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup ads. “Hey, you got squid on my mayonnaise!” “Hey, you got mayonnaise on my squid!” American snack manufacturers, snap this one up before it’s too late.

Packaging
The packaging, as shown above, is pretty ho-hum, with the exception of the bitchin’ illustration:

It should be noted that unlike in the U.S.A., where mayonnaise usually comes in jars, in Japan it comes in skinny plastic bottles like this:

This is fortunate for the illustration, because you couldn’t really have a squid riding a rocket-powered mayonnaise jar. That would just be stupid. The aerodynamics would be all off.

Taste:
I was expecting the worst, but really they weren’t all that bad. They just had a mild mayonnaise flavor, actually; I couldn’t really detect any hint of squid (though it did smell just a little fishy). If fried mayonnaise chips sound good to you, then this is your product. If not, then… what’s wrong with you? Who wouldn’t want to eat fried mayonnaise chips?

Direct Youtube Link
Above is a Japanese ad from the 80s. At the end it says “World Fashion Creator Renown”, so I guess it’s an ad for a clothing manufacturer, maybe? I’m not really sure.

I wish I could have been at the meeting where the advertising agency pitched this ad to the company. What did they say? “Studies show that consumers love ‘bat-shit crazy’. The ‘bat-shit crazier’, the better!”

This clip was brought to my attention by an old friend, who conducts his (or her!) interneting under the alias “vogdoid”. Thanks, “v”!

One of my favorite stores in Japan is called Village Vanguard. It’s a weird and yet somehow harmonious mix of alternative book store and raunchy mall gift shop.

When I went there the other day, I ran across the above product, which is basically one of those parachuting army men toys, only Mario branded.

If you look closely, it’s a kid’s meal toy from Wendy’s.

Mario is owned by Nintendo, which is of course a Japanese company, so I find it funny that they’re importing Mario products from other countries (and crappy Mario products at that). For the kitsch value, I guess? Apparently kitsch value is pretty high, because they’re trying to sell these pieces of garbage for 714 yen, or like $7.50. Yikes!

Though it is vintage; the copyright says 2004, which means that these have been sitting around in a warehouse somewhere for like five years. I wonder what weird distribution network eventually led these to a trendy Japanese chain.