TESTIMONIALS

Cunning Takeyama （Comedian）

I gave out free TENGA to my audience as a surprise gift - it really livened things up!

I was stuck in a rut thinking “What do I want to do at my stand-up shows. What is it that I want to become as a comedian?” and I came to the conclusion that I wanted to talk about things you can’t on TV, things that are funny but sometimes overstep certain social boundaries. That’s why we call the show “Broadcast Prohibited”.

We had talks and meetings for about 10 months before deciding to put TENGA into our show, (Screen writer) Osamu Suzuki and I brainstormed all sorts of jokes and stories to put in our show, of course Suzuki and I had many different ideas and we pieced together the whole thing. Suzuki kept asking “Wouldn’t you like to know why TENGA was founded?”, and I admit, I really did want to find out.

A hit product of this sort of scale must have some sort of agenda and strategy behind it, wouldn’t it be fascinating to hear all the stories about it? Suzuki put forward “I want to interview them. If I interview them and it turns out they really are interesting, can we put it in our show?”, and when he came back from the interview, “The people behind this far surpass our original ideas.”

He was talking about President (Koichi) Matsumoto, and he said we should talk about his life. About the people behind this product and the men who haven’t given up on life.

We have to explain this properly, this will be our “Project X”. If Mr. (Koichi) Matsumoto wasn’t the president of TENGA, it probably wouldn’t exist.

And then we gave out free TENGA toys to the audience as a surprise gift. That really livened things up!

Cunning Takeyama　（Comedian）