He has a pen, and it turns out he has a butt-load of money… uhn, pen-butt-money!
It’s been about a year since that little jingle about pens and pineapples and all the wonderful things you can make with them first made a splash on the internet, and while most of us are pretty much over the song and all the gilt and punch perms that came with it, there was still one nagging question: how much money did that guy make from this anyway?
▼ How about one more spin for old time’s sake, eh?
A few months after the song’s initial success, Kosaka Daimaou who plays Piko Taro told the program Nonstop! that he had not gotten a single yen from the song. Naturally there was much rolling of the eyes and a collective groan of “yeah right” to be heard from the general population at this news.
And with good reason it turns out. On 29 September, Daimaou appeared on Fuji TV’s Downtown Now and finally admitted that at the time he was actually bringing in hundreds of millions of yen (millions of US dollars) a month, which equaled his income for the 25 previous years of his life combined!
Of course, the video itself had garnered over 120 million views and the ad revenue that came along with it, but Daimaou said that the bulk of his earning came from commercial appearances. Earlier this year he appeared in a major commercial for a leading chauffeur service in China that aired nationwide and is believed to have padded his pen-pineapple-apple-pen-purse considerably.
And also let’s not forget the PPAP cafe, appearances on Seasame Street, in SoftBank commercials, at the Grammy Awards, at the legendary Budokan arena, in government PSAs, in his own animated TV series, and even alongside his South Korean counterpart Psy in a music video.
Needless to say, Piko Taro was not one to turn down a job offer and successfully milked the PPAP fad for all it was worth, and perhaps then some. So while we might scoff at the song now and call it played out, Daimaou is having the last laugh all the way to the bank… alongside his swimsuit model wife.
Source: Josei Jisin, My Game News Flash
Featured image: YouTube/Tata Kaka