Pokémon Lunch Contest

Pokémon USA will launch a back-to-school promotion with Armour-Eckrich's LunchMakers that will put characters from the latest Pokémon Diamond and Pearl games on 30 million packages of the portable, refrigerated meals. The 13 varieties (six fun kits and seven "smalls") hit store shelves later this month and run through November.

Packages will tout 10,000 Pokémon prizes in the instant-win sweeps, including 10 trips to New York's Nintendo World to visit the Pokémon Center, Nintendo DS units, Diamond and Pearl videogames, DVDs from licensee Viz and character figures from Jakks-Pacific. And it wouldn't be Pokémon if there wasn't a card to collect: Each product package contains a bookmark featuring a different Pokémon character.

There will be no direct media support, but the brands will market online and at 950 stores via ShelfVision video ads triggered by a motion sensor.

While Pokémon skews about 2-1 boys-to-girls, the sweepstakes is aimed equally at boys and girls ages 5-11. "We made sure to focus on elements that are just as important to the girls as the boys," said Bruce Loeb, vp-marketing at Pokémon USA, New York. "We included tough and cute characters."

Pizza, nachos, chicken nuggets and Cracker Crunchers are some of the varieties that will carry new Pokémon characters Turtwig, Chimchar and Piplup along with classics Pikachu, Dialga and Palkia. Armour-Eckrich, Lisle, Ill., is a $1 billion a year company, and its LunchMakers is a leading brand in the portable, refrigerated lunch category.

There will be both an in-package instant win and an online, 2nd chance contest that will run from 7/23/2007 through 2/28/2008.

Pokémon Diamond and Pearl games were introduced this past spring and the Diamond and Pearl toon debuted in June on Cartoon Network.

Further details and full rules can be found at: http://www.lunchmakersgame.com/
de la PPN