An Air Zonk Lunch Box, and a Desk Full of Japanese Nintendo

Two collections came into Chrono Collectibles inside of a week. One of them is a single object. The other covered a desk.

The single object still wins.

A TurboGrafx-16 Promo Lunch Box With Zonk On The Lid

A white hard-shell lunch box. One sticker on the lid: TurboGrafx-16 "Power Up", with Zonk on it — the sunglasses-and-pompadour future version of Bonk, from Air Zonk.

It was never sold in a store. It is a promotional piece, made to put the TurboGrafx-16 in front of people rather than to sell them lunch.

Air Zonk came out in 1992, late in the TurboGrafx-16's American run. Hudson Soft built it as a Bonk spin-off that swapped caveman platforming for a cartoon shooter, and Electronic Gaming Monthly named it their TurboGrafx-16 Game of the Year. The platform never got the installed base it deserved in the United States, which is exactly why its marketing material is so thin on the ground now.

What we can and cannot tell you about it

We can tell you it is a period promotional item tied to Air Zonk and the Power Up campaign.

We cannot tell you the rules of the contest that gave it away, because we have not found them. Collectors who have handled these generally place them at trade shows — CES, Comdex, the early E3 years — where NEC and later Turbo Technologies were pushing the platform at retailers and press. That is a reasonable account. It is not a documented one, and we would rather say so than invent a story.

Scarcity we can speak to. Collectors who follow this piece put the number of known examples at two. That is the whole population, as far as anyone tracking it can tell.

We are not going to attach a figure to it. Something that surfaces this rarely has no run of sales to quote, and a number pulled out of the air is worth less than saying so.

It is on the shelf now, next to a Jaguar box and a Game Gear Sports Pack. That shelf is where the odd marketing material ends up around here.

The Second Haul: A Japanese Nintendo Collection

The second table came in on consignment, from a collector who has been buying carefully for a long time, in a direction most American collections never go. Nearly everything here is Japanese, boxed, and chosen rather than accumulated. We photograph a consignment the same way we photograph a purchase, because the work is the same: identify it, research it, list it properly.

The broad strokes:

• Boxed Japanese Nintendo 64. Mario Story, Zelda: Majora's Mask with the Expansion Pak, Ocarina of Time, Baku Bomberman 2, Konami's Hyper Olympic 64 and plenty more, in the small Japanese cardboard boxes that survive far less often than American plastic cases.
• Accessories nobody imported. The Taito Densha de GO! 64 train controller, boxed Controller Bros two-packs in Midnight Blue and Gold, a 64GB Pak, a Super Game Boy, and a Hudson Super Multitap in full Bomberman livery.
• Handhelds. A gold Game Boy Color, a red Game Boy Advance, a Game Boy Micro, an SP, and a clear blue Japanese cartridge case.
• Sealed modern Nintendo. Multiple Breath of the Wild Explorer's Editions, Super Mario Odyssey with the Traveler's Guide, and a stack of Wii, Wii U and DS Mario titles.
• Things Nintendo gave away. Promo discs, a Club Nintendo shirt still in its wrapper, Pikachu ears, and a pink Mario service polo.

This is not the first table from this collection. An earlier run was almost all Game Boy: boxed Japanese systems, a Pokémon Center set, a Hello Kitty bundle, and a row of Game Boy Colors in every shade Nintendo made.

Three Pieces We Keep Coming Back To

A Donkey Kong 64 cart that was never meant to be sold

Standard grey cartridge, standard DK64 label — until you read it. NOT FOR RESALE, and an ESRB box that says RP: Rating Pending.

These went to retailers, press and Nintendo staff before release, which is why the rating had not been finalised when the label was printed. They were demo and display units, not inventory, so very few were treated like something worth keeping. A Not For Resale cart with its label intact is a genuinely harder find than the retail copy it was made to advertise.

Mother 3 Deluxe Box

A plain red box with the title punched into it, and one of the most sought-after Japanese Game Boy Advance releases there is. Mother 3 shipped in Japan in 2006 and never received an official English release, which turned the Deluxe Box into a landmark piece for a series that still has no legal way into most American collections.

The box alone draws a crowd. Presentation like this is a large part of why Japanese releases keep pulling collectors east.

Three PokéPark Wii promotional DVDs

Three special DVDs for PokéPark Wii: Pikachu's Adventure, each one marked NOT FOR SALE, issued by The Pokémon Company to promote the game in Japan.

Promotional discs are the first thing thrown away and the last thing anyone sets out to collect, which is the whole reason they get scarce. We buy them every time.

The Unglamorous Part That Still Matters

Three sealed Breath of the Wild Explorer's Editions in a row is not a story. It is good inventory.

Collections rarely arrive as a list of grails. They arrive as a few remarkable pieces surrounded by solid, sealed, ordinary stock — and the ordinary stock is what carries the rest of the work. We take the whole table rather than cherry-picking it, and collectors generally prefer that too: one appointment, one handover, nothing left over to deal with.

What To Take From This If You Are Selling

Three things these two pickups have in common, and all three apply to whatever is in your closet:

1. Promotional material counts. Lunch boxes, display pieces, store standees, press kits, Not For Resale carts, promo discs. If it has a logo on it and was never sold, photograph it.
2. Imports are not a problem. Japanese boxes, Japanese manuals, region-locked consoles — we buy them, and we know what they are. You do not need to sort or research anything first.
3. Paperwork and packaging raise the number. The outer box, the insert, the ratings sheet, the receipt. Keep it with the item; it is worth more together than apart.

If that sounds like your collection, send photos. Chrono Collectibles researches what it is actually worth, then comes back with a number — an outright offer, or a consignment plan if you would rather we sell it for you. Either way, you see the reasoning.

Send us photos of your collection.