Latest Pokémon PON hanko stamps feature many precious pals from the Black and White era

These personal seals let you choose an Unova buddy to keep your signature company!

One of the biggest cultural surprises foreigners face when living in Japan is how often they’re expected to sign for things. And they aren’t expected to sign with a traditional handwritten signature either — Japan places a lot of importance on one’s personal seal or hanko, and so citizens are expected to whip out a hanko seal for everything from paying bills to accepting mail packages.

Something neat about hanko is that you can order custom ones so that your personal seal—provided it isn’t for specific bank accounts that limit such decorations—can contain cute prints, patterns, and character drawings alongside your surname. Hankos, a Japanese hanko company, is dedicated to providing as many different designs as possible to this end—they sell seals that will stamp your name next to anything, from fake puppy Cinnamoroll to, er, real puppies.

They also have a line specially dedicated to Pokémon prints, Pokémon PON. Naturally, you can purchase seals emblazoned with the franchise’s flagship characters Pikachu and Eevee, but the line has added Pokémon from various regional Pokédexes over the years: Johto has a set, as does Sinnoh.

Now it’s time for the Unova region from the Black and White games to take their turn. The region takes inspiration from the United States and is crawling with unusual and exciting Pokémon, such as Trubbish the bunny-eared garbage bag, the fluffy little fairy Whimsicott, and the haunted light fixture Chandelure. The promotional image for the line informs readers that now they can choose from an additional 156 designs to craft their own Pokémon PON stamp.

▼ Minccino, Darumaka, Snivy, Oshawott, and Tepig gambol around to show off the new stamps.

The stamps offer three different fonts to write your name in and allow up to three kanji characters, five hiragana or katakana characters, or six alphabet letters. You may also use them to make short message stamps to announce things like “Hi!” “OK!” or “Thanks”.

Get a look at all of the designs here, shown next to one of the most common surnames in Japan: 佐藤 (Satou).

You can even choose what kind of seal you receive. You can purchase your Pokémon PON as a shachihata self-inking stamp, which simply needs to be pressed to the paper to make a signature—these seals can be used to accept packages and decorate. The other kind, a simple wooden seal kind without a self-inking device, is accepted at work and by several banks including Sumitomo Mitsui, Mitsubishi UFJ, Mizuho, Risona, and Yucho.

▼ Use it to identify your clothes, personalize messages, or even grade papers!

The seals can be purchased through the official Pokémon PON website, with self-inking seals starting from 2,000 yen (US$18.21) and the plain wooden seals or black horn seals starting at 5,200 yen (US$47.36). And if you would rather collect a different type of stamp altogether, fear not—there’s a product out there for you, too.

Source, images: PR Times
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