Pocari's 'Scuffing Song' turns returnable bottles into paper-cut heroes

In 2022 Otsuka started selling Pocari Sweat in refillable 250ml glass returnable bottles to reduce plastic, but a return scheme only works when people bring the bottles back and understand why. The brief was to make sustainability legible and lovable for a broad audience, even small children, without lecturing.

A boy returns a personified Pocari returnable bottle; every reuse engraves a scuffing line on the glass, and the film loops forever — circularity in the telling.

Spoon, Dentsu and Nakayoshi Design brought in director OSRIN, cut-paper animator Moeji Tsuchiya and musician Kaho Nakamura. Sixty-two hand-made cuts, roughly one second of footage per working day over four and a half months, follow a trumpet-playing boy who befriends 'bottle-kun', meets an elder bottle covered in scuffing marks, and finally carries his bottle to the collection box so it can be refilled and circle the world again. The 2:35 film and a making-of video launched on 10 May 2023 on Otsuka's official YouTube channel.

The film won a D&AD 2024 Yellow Pencil (Animation/Traditional) and a One Show 2024 Gold Pencil in Moving Image Craft & Production, plus craft honours at ADFEST, Clio, Spikes Asia, London International and CICLOPE — turning a collection system most people never see into a story they choose to watch.

Otsuka Pharmaceutical's Pocari Sweat launched a 250ml returnable glass bottle in 2022, part of a drive to cut plastic and build a circular society. The catch is behavioural: a return scheme only works if people carry the bottles back, and 'sustainability' is a topic brands usually explain with charts. The company wanted a wide audience, including children, to feel the idea instead of reading about it.

The answer was 'Scuffing Song', a hand-made cut-paper stop-motion film made at roughly one second of footage per day over four and a half months. A boy who always plays the trumpet meets 'bottle-kun', a personified returnable bottle, and is taught by an elder bottle covered in white scuff lines: every time a bottle is used and returned it is engraved with another mark, so its wear is proof of the bottle's circular life. The boy then carries bottle-kun through an adventure to the collection box so it can be refilled and travel again.

The word 'scuffing' names those engraved lines, and the story itself is built to loop, symbolising a circular economy. Otsuka released the 2:35 film and a making-of video on its official YouTube channel on 10 May 2023.

Giving the bottle a face turns an abstract recycling system into a relationship a child can follow.

The scuff marks make reuse visible — the object's wear becomes evidence of the behaviour the scheme needs.

A film that loops forever performs the message instead of stating it: the format is the argument.

Hand-made craft signals care and earns attention in a category where sustainability films are usually factory content.

Personify the invisible system: make the returnable bottle a character, let the scuffs of reuse narrate its journey, and let the film loop forever so the format itself argues for circularity.

The film became one of the most decorated Japanese craft works of its year: D&AD 2024 Yellow Pencil in Animation/Traditional, One Show 2024 Gold Pencil in Moving Image Craft & Production, ADFEST 2024 Gold in Film Craft/Animation, Clio Silver, Spikes Asia Bronze, London International Silver and CICLOPE Gold. Spoon's own archive page lists the full run of awards, and the film remains on Otsuka's channel as the returnable-bottle programme's public face.