As the Apple Turns: Scene 4535: Bukuro: "Same To You!" (2/27/04)

Bukuro: "Same To You!" (2/27/04)

We're now only hours away from the grand opening of the Apple Store San Francisco-- can't you just taste the excitement? If not, you can probably at least smell it, especially if you're already in line downwind from that guy who's been waiting since Tuesday and chained himself to the store's front door to preserve his first-in-line spot without really thinking through the whole "lack of showers and toilets" thing beforehand. Nevertheless, everyone's in good spirits, and tomorrow's event ought to go down in the history books as one of the rowdiest grand openings ever. Yes, history books keep track of that stuff. Who knew?

"But AtAT," we hear you asking, "why bring up the Mystery Gift Bags again? After all, isn't that old news that you already covered a week and a half ago?" Well, um... We didn't bring up the Mystery Gift Bags again. You did. But now that you mention it, yeah, it is old news, but you have to understand, folks, sometimes it takes a little while for the really important issues (such as the weighty enigma of the Mystery Gift Bags) to filter down to the mainstream press. But what they may lack in promptness, they more than make up for in actually being journalists and stuff; reporters have managed to dig up a few more details about Apple's inscrutable little bundles o' fun. Whereas previously we'd noted that Apple was marketing the gift bags as including "over $600 worth of Apple products for $249," WIRED reports that the company has now gone on record to clarify: not all bags contain the same stuff, and while all of them will contain at least $600 worth of merchandise, some will pack up to $1000 worth of surprisey goodness-- and not all of it will necessarily be made by Apple. (The company also hinted that not all of the bags will include a miniPod. Buyer beware.)

WIRED also reveals the origin of this oh-so-intriguing promotion: the windswept plains and sweltering jungles of Japan. It seems that in Japan, there's a retail tradition called "fukubukuro," which apparently means "lucky bag" (whereas we just thought it was a really rude thing to say to some guy named Bukuro). Lucky bags "attract tens of thousands of customers to Japan's New Year's Day sales," and the frenzy reaches such a fever pitch that "there are reports of injuries during lucky bag stampedes." (So, we guess, the bags are lucky; the shoppers, not so much.) Anyway, the Apple Store Ginza recently fell in with tradition and sold lucky bags, one of which contained "an iSight camera, a Bluetooth USB adapter, a Bluetooth mouse, Apple's Keynote presentation software, a package for the .Mac online services, and a 10 percent discount card for the store" for $249. They sold like crazy, so Apple's seeing if Americans will pick up the craze as well.

Meanwhile, Macworld has a photo of one of the so-called lucky bags-- it's rather larger than we expected-- and includes a single sentence to answer the burning question on everybody's mind: "No, senior Apple officials said, you can not shake the Lucky Bag."

By the way, if you just can't make it to the party for tomorrow's opening, at the very least you can enjoy the QuickTime footage of the store offered up by faithful viewer Nathan Trebes. It was apparently shot during Thursday's press-only opening, and therefore only offers a view from the outside looking in, but hey, it's better than nothing. We didn't spot any lucky bags, though. Regardless, viewers will be relieved to note that No-Bathroom-or-Toilets Guy has been digitally removed from this footage. Is there anything Shake can't do?

SceneLink (4535)

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The above scene was taken from the 2/27/04 episode:

February 27, 2004: The press digs up more details about the $249 "lucky bags" that will be sold at tomorrow's Apple Store San Francisco grand opening. Meanwhile, investment funds are lining up to vote against Eisner at next week's Disney investors' meeting, and Microsoft admits that Windows 95 was built with no security whatsoever-- whoops!...

Other scenes from that episode:

4536: Eisner's Clock Is Ticking (2/27/04) Folks, we need to clarify a little something about the state of the ongoing Disney-Pixar saga, here: nobody's getting voted off the island at the investors' meeting on Wednesday. A lot of people seem to think that there's a chance that Michael Eisner and his cronies will get booted by a flood of "Good God, No" votes by appalled shareholders marshaled by Roy Disney and Stan Gold, but unfortunately (as reported by Reuters), "the 11-member Disney board is guaranteed to be reelected at the March 3 meeting since there are no rival candidates."...
4537: Nice When They Admit It (2/27/04) Hey, it's Friday once again, and you all know what that means: it's Wildly Off-Topic Microsoft-Bashing Day! We actually had to hang onto today's little gem for a while in order to save it for the weekend, which would gravely compromise our journalistic integrity if, you know, we actually had any...

Or view the entire episode as originally broadcast...


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