6/24/2005

Meiji is entering the iced coffee arena just in time for Summer and they do it with a clever idea in mind. Instead of making a can with coffee in it just like everybody else, and instead of trying to cover up a really shitty fake coffee taste with some fake milk taste just like everybody else, they take the reversed the problem and approached it the other way around. What would you expect from a company who is famous for their milk? Their ice coffee is NOT iced coffee: it’s “milk and coffee“.

Even if you are craving for a short black, when getting canned coffee in Japan, from a convenience store or a vending machine, hot or cold, well, in every circumstances, NEVER get the ones without milk in them. There are a few available, true, but you should always resist. This is not coffee. It is everything and anything else, but it is not coffee. Not that the other kinds are coffee either, but at least the milk and sugar covers that really strange fake coffee taste and makes the whole experience bearable, sometimes even enjoyable and refreshing…

But that was before Meiji’s creative team pull that twist of their sleeve and introduced the “milk and coffee” concept, where milk is the drink and coffee is the flavour, not the opposite. So how does it taste? Milky and creamy, with a soft taste of coffee (and lotsa sugar as usual). It is fresh and soft, and does not leave that bitter aftertaste most canned coffee have. Good point there.

But there’s more. Canned coffee also have another inconvenient: cans. Sure, the sound when you open it is cool, and I am convinced some marketing people found out Japanese salarymen think it is more manly to drink out of a can rather than a pet bottle, but cans have an aluminium taste, and more importantly, once you opened one, you can’t close it. Pet bottle on the other hand are clean and soft and happy (you can tell I am biased, can’t you?). There are other iced coffee in pet bottles, but it is still not the norm though. Meiji stands out a little more with this packaging. Good point there too.

But there is still more! And the gadgets fans here will appreciate this one. The cap of the bottle has a strange little encarving at the top. and the telescopic straw is pointy on one side. That gives you two options to drink this coffee flavored milk. Either you open the bottle and drink just like with any bottle, or you punch the straw from the little pre-formed hole at the top and drink it through the cap. This is not the first drink which has such a cap, but this system is actually quite rare, and inexistant in the iced coffee range as far as I know. There are so many women who will choose this last option, to drink elegantly and not mess with their make up and their posture, it’s a genius marketing move from Meiji’s part. And a very obvious one too: a quick look at the bottle and you understand who it is targetted for. I am comfortable with my feminine side (one could even say I am a Tokyosexual, but that would be far fetched) and I know what I’m gonna drink this summer.

Now all they need to do is to get them in vending machines…