Friday, November 1, 2019

Wonda Lupin III - Last Can




Ok, last one. When I wrote about getting all the other Lupin III cans (red and gold brands), I still hadn't found Morning Shot 12. At that time, too, I hadn't gotten 25 points for applying for the Monkey Punch artwork. I was thinking this would put me in a drawing at the end of the campaign on Nov. 11, and that either I would win or not then. Eventually, I decided to get two more random cans just for the points to get that out of the way. As soon as I clicked on "Use points for artwork," the Wonda website came back with "You Lose."

Wow. I mean, that's really, really stupid. The customer spends over $30 buying the can coffee, and is told immediately that their expenditure is a waste of money, and that if they want to try again, they need to spend another $30 to stock up on 25 cans of marginal coffee. What are the odds they're going to run the risk of losing again? Keep trying over and over and you end up being stuck with hundreds of cans you're never going to drink. At least with having to wait until a later drawing, you may be more likely to buy Wonda every morning just to have something to drink, and then hope that entering multiple times into the contest will give you better odds.

But, the way Wonda is doing this, I have to ask, "Why did I lose? Is it because they already gave away the prizes? If there are no prizes left, why keep playing? If there's a random number generator, how do they know how to set the odds? Is anyone going to win by Nov. 11th? If no one wins, do they just give the artwork to the advertising company and top Wonda staff to keep? If they never intended to give out the art, why keep playing?" Just really dumb.

Anyway, a few days later, I was at the Don Quixote discount shop, and there were stacks of Wonda 6-packs for both the red and gold brands, and about half of the stacks had the Lupin cans (the other half was for the original cans). What really made all the difference was that the sign in front said "230 yen for 6 cans - over a 60% discount!" I didn't have time to look at them closely then, and I didn't know if the price was only for the older cans they wanted to unload. A couple days later, I came back, and I idly looked at the four cans on the ends of the packs to see if I could find #12 that way (the middle two cans were obscured by the 6-pack carton wrapper). On the second pack I looked at, #12 was right there in front of my face. And, the price applied to the new cans. 230 yen for 6 cans at Don Quixote was cheaper than just getting 2 cans (128 yen each) from Lawson's. So, yeah, I felt completely justified at getting the full 6-pack just to have the photo of the missing can for the blog.

And, yeah, I could get 4 packs + 1 can to try applying for the Monkey Punch artwork again for just a little over 1,000 yen, but, no. I don't like the coffee that much, and as mentioned above, it's possible that all 25 sets of the artwork are already gone.

Stick a fork into this one, I'm done.

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