Bunbun Telephone

The Bunbun Telephone Present (ぶんぶんテレホン プレゼント) is an animated, plush telephone given away to winners of a sweepstake held by Calpis KK. According to an upload of a commercial for the sweepstake on YouTube, the commercial is from 1989 and the sweepstake was held from the 22nd of April until the 30th of June.

'Bunbun' is an onomatopoeia that can refer to a buzzing noise made by an insect.

Appearance & Features

Bunbun syncs his mouth movement to the voice of the person who is speaking to you on the phone.

The phone resembles a bee with a fluffy white mane around its neck, dark blue stripes on its body, and a pair of light pink wings. The top of its head is dark blue, its face, arms, body, and legs are yellow, and it has a bair of black dots on its face for its eyes. It has a pair of pink antennae with pink, round ends. The inside of its mouth is pink.

It has a panel on its front with buttons labelled with numbers and letters to make a phone call, a gray button labelled "Push On" to answer a received call, another switch labelled "Rest" and "Work" (for the mouth movement, I assume), and a black switch that allows you to use tone or pulse dialing. It also has a gray knob that allows you to adjust the volume.

A white telephone cord comes out of the back of the plush, and a yellow zipper is located beneath the plush.

Packaging

Bunbun was shipped to winners of the campaign in a plastic bag in either a brown or white cardboard box that has the company and the product's name.

Prototype

In the commercial, Bunbun looks slightly different from the released version of himself. The only differences I can point out for certain is that his eyes are closer to each other, in contrast to the released version, and his mouth looks different. Its mouth is already open when it isn't speaking, but it opens its mouth a little more as it speaks.

Commercial

Does his face remind anybody of Chatta? lol

Links

I don't know what happened to the source of the first image on this page, so I can't link to it. It was from a listing originally, but a scamsite took the image from the original source to pretend it was selling it. That happens A LOT, these days. Please be careful when you discover auction websites you haven't bought anything from before, and check that the website selling what you want is an actual service and not a scamsite.

• Listing showing Bunbun in a bag
• Sold listing with photos of the phone and its white box
• Photos of the phone with a brown box (a photo of the panel was taken from here, too)