Revolting coffee from Japan Tobacco
At my local vending machine, I took a double take today when I saw AROMA REVOLTing coffee for sale at the premium price of 140 yen.
Of course, without my glasses I was reading it wrong, it was AROMA REVOLUT coffee from “JT” aka Japan Tobacco Corp.—the Japanese government’s quasi-monopoly on carcinogens, summer crafts, and humor.
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July 23rd, 2009 at 5:43 pm
Don’t miss JT’s demented ad campaigns.
wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Tobacco#Smoking_etiquette_posters
July 24th, 2009 at 12:03 am
I came across this when searching information on Google. I’ll use it to complete my report for this weekend, thanks for the info.
July 24th, 2009 at 5:57 am
Thanks for posting about this sio-called Japanese invention “can coffee,” if anybody else would like to read more about this topic see;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canned_liquid_coffee
Canned Liquid coffee (缶コーヒー, kan kōhī?) is ubiquitous in Japan, with a large number of companies competing fiercely and offering various types for sale. Japanese canned coffee is already brewed and ready to drink. It is available in supermarkets and convenience stores (コンビニ, kombini?), with vast numbers of cans being sold in vending machines that offer heated cans in the autumn and winter, and cold cans in the warm months.
Canned coffee is a Japanese creation: the English-language term “can coffee” was created in Japan and is believed to have entered English usage as a way of distinguishing it from a typical can of, for instance, Folgers or Nescafé. In the United States, at least, “canned coffee” is the preferred term, if used at all.
UCC Ueshima Coffee Co. is well known in Japan for pioneering canned coffee with milk in 1969. The official government web site of Shimane Prefecture, Japan, claims that the world’s first canned coffee — Mira Coffee — appeared in Shimane in 1965, but this was short-lived.
More significant perhaps was the 1973 introduction by Pokka Coffee of the hot and cold drink vending machine. The Japanese Wikipedia version of this article claims that it was this introduction that allowed the industry to take off, and in 1983 canned coffee makers shipped more than 100 million cases.
Pokka Original and Vivo Coffee, short and tall straight-sided steel cans from the late 1970s. Use of Western faces on Japanese coffee cans is a long-standing design motif.
One noteworthy element of Japanese canned coffee is the liberal use of English both for the word “coffee” and the brand name. Engrish is also used. Occasionally the Japanese word kōhī (コーヒー?) dominates the can design, or, for effect, the kanji for coffee (珈琲?) may be used as well (also pronounced kōhī). Apart from company and content information English is the primary language used on Japanese coffee cans, for reasons that remain unclear.