A surprising product just sneaked into Lawson’s upsize campaign.

Right now, Japan’s Lawson convenience store chain is holding a special “Chou Happy Sugi Challenge” campaign, which literally translates as “Super Happy Too Much! Challenge”. Running over four weeks in June, each week sees a new lineup of products getting upsized at no extra cost to customers, and right now, in week three, there’s one particular item that has caught everyone’s attention.

Most of the products in the campaign are larger-than-usual food and drink items, but this week, Lawson surprised everyone by upsizing an unexpected product – the long soft towel.

With the standard version being already a metre (3.3 feet) long, we needed to know what the 51-percent upsize would look like, so we purchased both towels for a size comparison.

▼ Two different sizes, but at the same 348 yen (US$2.44) price point.

Starting with the regular version, it definitely lived up to its “long” moniker. As much as it was long in length, it was also short in width, which is in keeping with the style of towel that’s popular in Japan for drying or washing small areas like your face and arms, and wearing around your neck or forehead when doing outdoor work.

Next, we unfolded the 51-percent larger version, and discovered that… it was loooong! Absolutely ridiculously long! Its length was almost double that of the regular version, making it an unusually oversized towel that you wouldn’t normally ever come across.

To get a true feel of the size difference, let’s take a look at them again.

▼ Standard size

▼ Super Happy Too Much! size.

▼ Whereas the standard is handy for wicking away sweat when worn around the neck of one person…

▼ …the long version can do the work for two people!

Needless to say, our reporters were overjoyed with the towel, and everyone in the office couldn’t help but marvel at the size of it. While they weren’t initially sure why Lawson thought to give this particular product the upsize treatment over all the others they could’ve chosen from, it certainly made an impact.

After thinking about it, we realised that upsizing the towel actually served a greater purpose, as it directed us to the daily sundries section, which is one of the least visited sections of a convenience store. It’s a clever way to get us to look beyond convenience store food, and now that we’ve seen what’s hiding there, we know there’s more to Lawson than just its massive bento lunches.

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