I didn’t bring a bento (lunch box) to work today, so during the noon break I went over to a nearby convenience store with my buddy and picked up a tuna mayo onigiri (rice ball), a rather rubbish sandwich, and for the heck of it, some Super Mario 3D Land candy. Popular Japanese game mascots and franchises are promoted like no tomorrow over here (ie. Monster Hunter coffee), and as one would expect, Mario is no exception. Here’s a shot of the package on the left:

The product title at the top reads “Super Mario 3D Land Gummy”. Below the coin rocketing out of Mario’s butt, it says “coin shaped, pineapple flavoured gummy”, and on the far right it explains that there is one plastic character card in each pack and twenty different cards to collect in all.

The collectable card I pulled was a Tail Goomba. Or as written in Japanese, a shippo kuribo. ‘Shippo’ means ‘tail’ and ‘kuribo’ is the corresponding Japanese name for ‘goomba’. I expected the card to be a cheap cut-out, but it was actually made from relatively firm plastic, translucent purple, and quite sharp looking. Will I collect them all? I don’t like candy all that much (though the gummy was admittedly tasty), so probably not. But here’s to another day of cool Japanese food product promotions!