A Treasure in Kyoto: Rediscovering Nintendo’s First Ad from 1894

Discovering a Rare Find—Twice!

A few weeks ago, on October 2nd, I was in Kyoto, Japan, to visit the newly opened Nintendo Museum.

The day before my museum visit, I was lucky to view a historic document recently uncovered by a fellow researcher: Nintendo’s earliest known advertisement, an astonishing 130 years old.

And a day after the museum visit, the discovery of a second copy of that document was truly remarkable.

The earliest known advertisement by Nintendo, 130 years old

I was visiting Japan with fellow Nintendo historians and enthusiasts Florent Gorges and Fabrice Heilig. The night before the museum opening, we stayed at a special location in Kyoto: Hotel Marufukuro.

This was Nintendo's first stone-built headquarters, now renovated and remodeled as a hotel. On the second floor is a room called the "dNa Library," which houses books and artifacts that tell the story of Nintendo’s history. We are honored to have our books—one by Florent and one by me, with contributions from Fabrice—displayed in this library.

Earlier that day, Fabrice had picked an old book from a Kyoto-based antiquarian bookshop.

The shop owner had contacted Fabrice, who lives in France, a year earlier about this book in his collection but, in the end, wasn’t comfortable selling it over such a distance.

Now that Fabrice was in Kyoto for the museum opening, he seized the opportunity to acquire it in person.

As the proud new owner of this historic find, he shared it with us in the library. There could be no better place for this unveiling than Nintendo's former headquarters, located on the very site where the company was founded back in 1889. Florent recorded a video of this moment, which you can find at the bottom of this post.

While visiting the Nintendo Museum the next day, I spoke with Japanese playing card aficionado Marcus Richert, who knew of a Kyoto bookseller offering a second copy of this rare book.

Barely believing our luck, Florent and I set off the following day to investigate. Finding even one copy was a rare stroke of fortune—but discovering two seemed almost unbelievable.

Nintendo Museum's 2024 Ultra Hand Remake: honors and improves the original

The Nintendo Museum has brought back the iconic Ultra Hand from 1966! But how does this new version stack up against the original classic? Let’s dive in and find out!

The Ultra Hand within the Nintendo Museum collection

The Nintendo Ultra Hand is an important product in the history of the company. It brought Nintendo its first million-selling success as a toy maker in Japan, similar in impact at the time to how, in the early 1980s, the Game & Watch series became a sales hit on a global scale.

Back in 2011, when I started this blog, some of the earliest posts focused on the Ultra Hand and its inventor, Gunpei Yokoi.

A few years later, when releasing the Before Mario book—like the blog, also about Nintendo's 'toys and games' period before the release of the Family Computer in 1983—it was clear what should be on the front cover: the Ultra Hand.

Visiting the Nintendo Museum, October 2024

As you can image, when I visited the newly-opened Nintendo Museum a few weeks ago (a full report of which will follow later), I was curious to see how the Ultra Hand is covered there.

The second floor of the museum features a large exhibition of all of Nintendo's products, from its earliest days up to the present. I was glad that the Ultra Hand, along with many other vintage items, was on display here. Unfortunately, no pictures are allowed in this area, so I can't show it here, but it was great to see that all vintage products from before the video game era were given the attention and space they deserve.

On the first floor is a large display called 'A Succession of Ideas' (アイデアの継承). And luckily, on this floor pictures are allowed.

This display visually demonstrates how the ideas behind some of Nintendo's key products have endured and evolved over time.

The Ultra Hand, shown in the top left corner, is one of these 'primordial' ideas, alongside the Ultra Machine (bottom left), Game & Watch (top right), and Love Tester (bottom right).

All four products, I should add, came from the minds of Gunpei Yokoi and his R&D team.

As an aside, the museum contains all sorts of little Easter eggs. If you look carefully at this display, you’ll spot Pikmin gathering objects—specifically, balls from the Ultra Hand set.

Nintendo Poitan Game, a water toy lost in time (ポイタン ゲーム, 1966)

Most of the posts on this blog feature vintage Nintendo toys and games from my personal collection. When I acquire items, I photograph them and document them here.

Today, we are going to take a closer look at an item that I do not own. In fact, I do not know anyone who has one, including the recently opened Nintendo Museum.

We do believe that this toy exists, and the source for this belief comes from a couple of magazine advertisements from the mid-1960s.

The first magazine is called Weekly Shōnen Sunday (週刊少年サンデー), one of the many weekly or monthly "boys" ("Shōnen") magazines that started appearing in Japan in the 1960s. These magazines featured a mix of (serialized) manga, gags, and stories about adventure and sports.

The particular issue we are interested in is number 27 from 1966, published on Sunday, July 10th.

On the inside cover of this magazine is a full-size, full-color advertisement by Nintendo.

It presents a new release (新発売), called the Poitan Game (ポイタン ゲーム), which was offered for ¥500.