Canned and bottled drinks often come with an omake, a little extra giveaway perched on top or hanging from the neck – some tiny value-add to stand out. Character charms to put on cell phones are common, but oil-blotting sheets, model airplanes, PET bottle pouches, and even miniature Le Creuset cookware barely raise an eyebrow. (What's that? You wish someone had kept a blog with pictures of all these Japanese drink bottle giveaways for the last five years or so? Enjoy.)
Zima is taking the art of the omake to a new level with its spring "Kiss A-ZIMA" campaign. The party may be over for the sweet, clear "malternative" beverage that was axed two years ago in the states, but it's turning into a make-out fest in Japan now that each bottle comes with a pair of silicone lips. With the tag line "Zima taste is kissing taste," the campaign suggests drinkers can enjoy their citrusy 4.5% alcohol beverage and steal a kiss from a celebrity at the same time.
Models Yukina Kinoshita, Aya Kiguchi and Yuu Tejima and soccer player Yuto Nakamura and actor Kensei Mikami all had their lips immortalized in the soft, pink plastic. The Kiss A-Zima campaign Web site has films of the lip-casting process for each person. A CG animated version of the lips twirls endlessly in a companion screen, accompanied by five measurements in millimeters (under, top, depth, width and height) and six dimensions (thickness, weight, firmness, etc.) plotted on a radar graph for each set of smackers.