New Arrival: Game Boy Bath and Shower Foam

Just when you think the Game Boy licence reached everywhere, along comes the bathroom. This arrival is one of the more delightfully strange novelties the collection has taken in: an officially licensed bath and shower foam, styled as a Game Boy, released by Takara in 1997.

1997 Takara decided the console belonged in the bathroom cabinet, and here we are.

What It Is

It is exactly what it sounds like, a container of children's bath foam dressed up in the shape and livery of the console, but with a charming twist: it even includes a little skill game, where the aim is to guide Yoshi's eggs into his belly. So the object is part toiletry, part toy, wrapping a genuine play element around what is, at bottom, a bottle of soap. That combination of everyday product and Nintendo branding is precisely what makes it such a period curiosity.

Why It Joined the Collection

The far reaches of the Game Boy licence are one of the most entertaining things to document, because they show just how completely the console had entered daily life: not only in bags and on desks, but in the bathroom cabinet. Consumable novelties like this were used up and thrown away, so surviving examples are surprisingly scarce. Keeping one here holds on to the sheer, slightly absurd breadth of Game Boy merchandising, and it sits happily among the collection's other unusual licensed oddities.

The Game Boy bath and shower foam is documented, with photographs, on its own page in the collection.