KFC Japan makes you want to eat your computer accessories

In Japan, where KFC is associated with America and a warm-hearted Christmas—people order buckets of KFC drumsticks months in advance to celebrate with loved ones—the campaign stirred excitement on Twitter among fans and casual KFC eaters.

The call to action for the campaign, which took place through September, was simple: tweet with a message and special hashtag for a chance to win one of the limited-edition accessories. What the campaign had invested in, however, was the eye-poppingly quirky accessory designs, which managed to get laughs out of most people—followed by an urge to actually possess the accessories.

Adding to the anticipation: The one-off designs were not for sale. For now, anyway. By the end, the dedicated landing page indicated over 34,000 user tweets and 16,000 Facebook shares.

Campaign Asia-Pacific asked Marc Wesseling, industry observer and director at Tokyo-based creative agency UltraSuperNew, for comment.

“It’s actually my desktop wallpaper and I shared it with friends,” said Wesseling, laughing. “It’s a very brave campaign to make fun of your own product. It’s tasteless, but it put a smile on my face and it’s been talked about a lot on social media in Japan.”

The design accessories included the KFC “chikin-gata” mouse, which looks like a massive deep-fried chicken thigh. It even has a scroll wheel.

Similarly, there’s the over-sized chicken thigh USB memory stick (pictured at the start of this article), which won’t go unnoticed jabbing out the side of your computer. While it might make for an interesting conversation-starter at the office or coffee shop, it may actually prevent access to adjacent USB ports.

Next there’s the KFC original keyboard, which features tiny 3-D models of fried chicken on the keypad, except for the letters “K”, “F” and “C”, and features a miniature stand-up Colonel Sanders.

Designed especially for the ladies are chicken drumstick-shaped earrings, which 47 Twitter followers had the chance to win and get in touch with their inner chicken-fashionistas.

A few weeks into the campaign, KFC Japan revealed a humongous fried chicken-thigh iPhone 5s case that is literally the size of a person’s head and boasts a chicken-leg bone handle grip. It looks like some kind of improvised baton ripped off a new breed of steroid chicken.

The only soft-textured design in the series is a big cuddly chicken-thigh pillow that you can stick your head in for a bit of Kentucky-fried privacy. We suppose it's meant for napping at one's desk, but it could also serve as a Halloween costume.