San-o Popeye Table Flicker (サンオー パイ テーブル フリッカー)

Nintendo's third president Hiroshi Yamauchi, the great-grandson of company founder Fusajiro Yamauchi, built the company from modestly successful playing card manufacturer to a global entertainment powerhouse, becoming one of the wealthiest people in Japan in the process.

During his fifty year long reign over Nintendo, he was always willing to stick out his neck, try new things and take risks. Many of his bets did pay off, though not all. No success without failure.

One of his unsuccessful, but not less fascinating, business endeavours from the early 1960s was a range of convenience food products, created under the name San-O ("サンオー" or "three Os"). 

Very few of these products have survived to this day. Finding one is a big thing for a collector of vintage Nintendo items.

Two versions of Popeye Flicker by San-O (early 1960s)

Last year I posted about a San-o seasoning product called Popeye Gold Flicker (ポパイ ゴールド フリッカー). Just recently I acquired another version of this Flicker.

This one is called Popeye Table Flicker (ポパイ テーブル フリッカー). The container is the same size as that of Popeye Gold Flicker, but it is made from carton and paper, rather than from tin.

The contents are identical: a seasoning that was used as topping for rice. This container was intended to be used at the diner table, hence the name.

Unfortunately... empty

Unlike the Popeye Gold Flicker tin, Popeye Table Flicker has a top that can be re-closed after use.

Like a number of other San-o products, the American cartoon sailor is used for branding and advertising the product. Popeye wasn't the only character used by San-o; some of their products used Disney figures to attract extra sales. These products clearly were targeted to families with children.

Popeye is a well chosen endorser for this product, given his healthy and strong image. According to the text on the container, Popeye Table Flicker contains vitamins and calcium, as well as spinach!

I am very happy to have found another piece of San-O history. The item that now tops my wish list is a packet of San-O rice. Given that these disappeared from the marketplace about sixty years ago, that will not be an easy task. The search continues!

Previous posts about San-O can be found here and here.

Popeye Gold Flicker (パイ ゴールド フリッカー): a rare item from Nintendo's food history

This empty, rusty little tin may not look like much to the casual observer.

Still, it is one of the prize possessions in my vintage Nintendo collection, because of it's part in the company's history.

It is rather small, with a height of only 9.3 centimeters and a diameter of 2.4 centimeters. The top is opened, and it's contents are long gone.

The brand name on the front is Popeye Gold Flicker (ポパイ ゴールド フリッカー). When it was still new, some sixty years ago, the tin must have been shiny gold coloured. Part of this colour is still visible, though much has disappeared over time.

The company name on the front is not Nintendo, but San'ō syokuhin Co., Ltd. This company, started in 1961 when Nintendo's business was still going into multiple directions, was Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi's vehicle for entering Japan's food industry. For this Nintendo started a joint-venture with two partners: the University of Kyoto and the Omikenshi Company. This joint venture was called San'ō syokuhin.

The San'ō syokuhin company developped a number of products for the growing market of convenience food: instant rice, instant ramen and seasoning mixes. This tin is an item from their range of such seasoning products, that are called furikake in Japan. Hence the brand name Flicker, pronounced "furik-kaa" in Japanese.

An important part of the marketing of the San'ō syokuhin company was the use of licensed figures from America, in particular Popeye and Disney characters. A few years earlier, Nintendo already had acquired license rights for the use of these figures on their playing cards, and thus had the contacts to extend these rights for these food products.