Just In: Game Boy Tissues, a Wario Land Giveaway From Japan

Of all the things a museum might preserve, a packet of tissues has to be among the most unlikely. Yet this arrival is exactly that: Game Boy-branded handkerchiefs, given away by Nintendo to fans in Japan around the 1994 release of Wario Land, and somehow surviving the thirty years since.

A packet of tissues - an unlikely item in an musuem

What It Is

These Game Boy-design handkerchiefs were handed out by Nintendo to fans in Japan around the launch of Wario Land in 1994. They are a small, thoroughly disposable piece of promotional merchandise, the kind of thing meant to be used up and thrown away within days, which is precisely why surviving examples are such a nice addition to the collection. Unopened and intact, they are a tiny, fragile fragment of a specific marketing moment.

The Art of the Pocket Tissue

There is a lovely piece of cultural context behind this object. In Japan, handing out free packets of pocket tissues is a long-established advertising tradition; for decades, companies have printed their message on tissue packs and given them away on busy streets, knowing people will happily take something useful and carry the advertisement around in their pocket. For Nintendo to use that very channel to promote a Game Boy game is a perfect little example of marketing woven into everyday Japanese life, the console's characters slipped into a routine as ordinary as blowing your nose.

A Package Of Tissues As Wario Land Promotin

That the giveaway promoted Wario Land specifically fits the mischievous spirit of the game, whose greedy anti-hero was Nintendo's cheeky answer to the wholesome Mario. But the real charm here is the survival of something so ephemeral. Promotional consumables like these were never catalogued, never treasured and almost never kept, so an intact example is far rarer than many a boxed game. It is the sort of humble, overlooked object that a preservation-minded collection exists precisely to rescue.

Why It Joined the Collection

The most disposable promotional items are the hardest to find and the most revealing to keep, and these tissues are a perfect case. They document a very Japanese style of advertising and a specific 1994 Wario Land promotion, and they sit among the collection's other easily-lost pieces of Game Boy merchandise. Preserving something meant to be thrown away is, in a small way, the whole point.

The Wario Land promotional tissues are documented, with photographs, on their own page in the collection.