Suntory Birdtales Sets

OK, these are not beer cans, nor are they breweriana. They are tied to Suntory Corporation however, and are related to the founder's love of birds. From 2004-2006 Suntory issued a set of plastic models that fit on a small plastic cap for water bottles. From what info I can find online, they were made by Kaiyodo, a Japanese company that specializes in figurines and model kits. A few quick searches found countless sites from collectors who specialize in collecting the small Kaiyodo figurines, not just the Suntory sets, but those with characters from Disney, anime, science fiction shows, along with numerous other nature-themed sets. I think I'll just stick with the Suntory Birdtales sets as a "go-with" for my Suntory bird cans.

At any rate, there are three sets, each with 12 figures. The first one was issued in 2004, the second in 2005, the third in 2006. The figures each came with a bottle of Suntory Natural Water. (Photo from Suntory news-release)

Here are the three sets. The photos came from http://nvj7.narod.ru and they retain all the rights to the photos. I tried to ask permission to use them but could not find a POC to ask largely because the site is in Russian and I did not see any copyright notice. My apologies. If the owner of nvj7.narod.ru wants me to pull the photos, please contact me and I will do so. Warning: Firefox sometimes doesn't like opening the Russian site. As far as I can tell it is NOT a source of malware but it uses an ocet stream that Firefox chokes on.

Note that the second and third sets have figures of things other than birds. I have the entire third set, and a few of the second, but that's all so far.

For those that read Japanese, here is the info that came with one of the figures in the third set.