With the Tokyo Olympic Committee (TOC) officially cutting ties with Kenjiro Sano’s much maligned emblem, one obvious question is on everyone’s lips: What does this mean for that oden poster made by the 7-Eleven in Musashikoganei, Tokyo?

Some of you may recall that this particular franchise had made a poster promoting their oden sale which bore a striking resemblance to the former Olympic emblem. After a request was made to the TOC, they had denied the poster’s commercial use and likeness to their intellectual property. However, now that the emblem will no longer be used, is the poster back in play?

▼ “In light of the discontinuation of the Sano emblem, we have received many demands to bring back our oden emblem poster…but we won’t be doing that fusion. After all, what we got here is something more stylish and cool.”
[tweet https://twitter.com/711musako2/status/638564459603062784 align=center]

In the same tweet we see an image of papers spread out across the desk, each one with a single oden item but the same caption at the bottom announcing the sale from 1 to 5 September. In a clever workaround, the convenience store made it so that each paper was original, but when stacked one on top of the other, you get the full oden Olympic emblem seen through the translucent sheets.

It understandable they’d want to hang onto that idea even thought they didn’t have to. It’s pretty neat and even though the TOC said they will discontinue use of the emblem it doesn’t mean they won’t continue to protect the way its used as copyright holders…for now at least.

It is interesting, however, that they chose the exact day that 7-Eleven was beginning their sale to announce the end of the emblem after so staunchly defending it up until now. I can just imagine the executive pouring a glass of bourbon with one hand while dabbing the sweat off his forehead with a handkerchief in the other all while reading about more and more claims of plagiarism. “Aw screw it,” he’d finally say, “Pull the plug! Might as well let that one little 7-Eleven half an hour outside central Tokyo have their poster in time for their sale at least.”

Source: Twitter @711musako2、NHK
Original article by Mr. Sato
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