Japanese Phone Service Lets You Make Friends with Coke Machines

The Japanese branch of The Coca-Cola Company announced on Thursday that it will launch "Happiness Quest" mobile phone service on December 5, allowing users to become friends with an anthropomorphic Coke soda machine. "Happiness Quest" lets users customize a Coke machine character and enjoy "friend-like communication."

"Happiness Quest" users will be able to interact with vending machine characters and receive messages from them. People can create a name for one of 20 basic soda machine friends and customize them. The Coca-Cola Company will release 1,000 different facial expressions and items for the characters online.

Coca-Cola machines throughout Japan will display special plates with QR codes (a type of matrix barcode) that people will scan with their mobile phones to access the "Happiness Quest" software and get a soda machine pal. Over 400,000 Coke machines will display the plates to start, and the beverage company plans to introduce them on 820,000 machines by next March.

Coca-Cola has also partnered with anime and manga projects in the past, including the Air Gear side-story manga and the Coca-Cola Racing Family: Fantastic Four anime-style commercial.

source: ANIME NEWS NETWORK