Nintendo Popeye Trump cards - San.o Popeye Ramen sales promotion (early 1960s)

A lesser known chapter in the history of Nintendo is their period as producer of packaged food.

In the early 1960s, Nintendo was part of a three-company consortium that was called San'ō syokuhin (サンオー食品株式会社). The other two members in the consortium were the University of Kyoto and the Omikenshi Company.

Nintendo had set up this consortium as a response to the tremendous success of Cup Noodle, the instant noodle dish invented by the Japanese firm Nissin in 1958. The Nintendo led consortium's purpose was to take a piece of the growing market for convenience food. In order to do this, they developed a new product: instant rice. They would later also produce instant noodles (ramen).

The San.o products did not become a big success (lore has it that they did not taste very well) and because of the very nature of these perishable goods, very limited evidence of them remains today.

Original envelop that was used to send the sweepstake prize

Recently I did find one of their sales promotions. This promotion was an effort to boost sales for San.o Popeye Ramen (ポパイ ラーメン). Apparently, a prize draw was held for customers of this brand of ramen, with the lucky winners receiving a pack of playing cards.

With Nintendo involvement in the San.o consortium, it was almost inevitable that the sales promotion would use one of Nintendo's own products, which at this time were still predominately playing cards.

Nintendo Hip Flip (ヒップフリップ, 1968)

The sexual revolution that swept through the Western world from the 1960s onwards is characterized by big changes in people's sexual morality, their views on interpersonal relationships, dating etiquette and attitudes towards physical contact before marriage.

It also had an impact on the toy scene, in particular on party games. All of the big American toy companies created games that catered to this new demand for swinging, groovy fun.

The first of these kind-of risqué games is MB's Twister, from 1966. It is also the most successful in this genre, up to this day.

Twister - The Game That Ties You Up In Knots

At the time, many people likely will have considered Twister as inappropriate or even lewd. The official goal of the game is to try and not touch each other too much. Still, obviously, the real fun is had when this objective fails and you cannot help but collapse into a human pile.

After MB's huge success with Twister, fellow toy giant Mattel followed with the downright scandalous Tight Squeeze. Touching each other is no longer a side effect here. This game is centered around strapping a bunch of people tightly together in pairs, in a big belt-like contraption, and seeing who can squeeze out first. In cases where the game partner was to your liking, I am sure people were in no hurry to finish the game, maximizing the wiggle time.

Tight Squeeze was advertised as "The Snuggle-Struggle Home Party Game for All Ages".

Yet more vintage Nintendo items sold

Alright, folks! It took a little bit longer than expected, but another batch of vintage Nintendo toys and games from my collection is now up for grabs on eBay sold.

All this on eBay now! And more!

The items listed included: Color TV Game 15 (2x), Electro Poker, Computer Mah-jong Yakuman link cable, board games, Table Soccer, Candy Machine, the rare My Car Race racing set, Paper Models and Mini Games.

These are currently being shipped out to their new owners. Thanks you to all bidders and congratulations to the winners.

How the Bassmate Computer came to be

In the previous post, we introduced the Bassmate Computer; a pocket electronic databank from 1984, targeted at bass fishers. The Bassmate was manufactured by Nintendo and co-designed by the Game & Watch team from Gunpei Yokoi's R&D1 department.

Bassmate Computer by Telko / Probe 2000 / KMV (1984)

American engineer Bill Olliges was the inventor of the Bassmate. He conceived it together with his business partner Ed Miller, who took care of the marketing through his company Telko.

In an earlier stage of his career, Bill was involved in the American arcade business, as was Ed. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, they both worked as executives for the American devision of Taito and later for Florida based Centuri inc.

During its heyday, Centuri was one of the top US suppliers of video arcade games. Many of their machines where licensed from Japanese companies, in particular Konami. The list of games they manufactured and distributed includes hits like Phoenix, Vanguard, Track & Field, Time Pilot and Gyruss.

After the demise of the video arcade industry in the mid 1980s, Bill started an engineering firm called Proton Engineering, which he is still involved in today. 

[Update: Almost five years after the first publication of this story, Bill Olliges passed away in February of 2018].

 

Bill Olliges holding a WalleyeMate II, one of the products
that was created after the success of the Bassmate

Bill explains where the idea for a fishing computer came from and how Nintendo got involved.