A Starbucks Barista Won a Contest With a Pikachu Latte. Now It's Going Nationwide in Japan.

Starbucks Japan's Pokémon collaboration starts on Wednesday, September 30, and the drink at the center of it didn't come from a marketing department. Starbucks ran what it called the Pokémon + Starbucks Barista Battle, a recipe contest open to baristas across the country. More than 700 entries came in, six finalists were picked, and the winner — Junko Nitta of the Starbucks Coffee Koriyama Asaka store — had her drink put into production nationwide.

It's the Pikachu Honey Cream Latte: an iced espresso drink built around honey, with caramel in the finish, under honey-flavored whipped cream. The yellow stands in for Pikachu, and the heart-shaped toppings on top are meant to read as his red cheeks. It's Tall only, ¥678 to take away and ¥690 to drink in, and it's on sale for nine days, September 30 through October 8. Buy one and you get a sticker of the collaboration artwork while they last.

Starbucks Coffee Japan

The merchandise is where the volume is: 41 items, drawn by the illustrator Hikaru Ichijo across twelve original artworks, plus eight short written stories that run alongside them — from "Our adventure begins with a cup of coffee" to "Our adventure continues beyond the cup." The pieces show Pikachu, Bulbasaur, Charmander, Squirtle and Eevee working alongside baristas rather than posing as mascots, and Ichijo draws the people without faces on purpose, so anyone looking at it can put themselves in the picture.

Starbucks Coffee Japan

In stores it's a reusable cup at ¥1,300 and three Starbucks Cards, issued on a ¥2,000 load. Online is where the expensive pieces sit: stainless TOGO bottles and plain stainless bottles at ¥6,600 each, a two-way stainless cup and holder and a cold cup tumbler at ¥4,000, stacking mugs at ¥3,800. The five Pokémon bottles are reversible — one side shows the Pokémon mid-technique, the other a quieter scene with a barista.

Starbucks Coffee Japan

What tells you how this is expected to go is the fine print. For the first three days, September 30 to October 2, it's one of each item per person in stores, and online it's one per order on day one. Starbucks is also suspending drive-thru service for a few hours on launch morning at stores it expects to be busy. That's a coffee chain planning for a sneaker-release queue.

None of it is leaving Japan as things stand — there's no announced international release, which is the usual pattern for Starbucks Japan's collaborations. It follows the same logic as Balenciaga's SEGA collection and Carnival's Tekken capsule: Japanese game franchises, treated as design material rather than a logo slapped on a blank.