Suntory Coffee BOSS

Coffee BOSS is a canned/bottled coffee beverage made by Suntory in Japan since 1992 in seemingly hundreds of flavors.

Interestingly enough, the brand’s pipe-smoking silhouette belongs to Tommy Lee Jones. This is kinda like a real-life manifestation of Lost in Translation [2003], where Bill Murray’s character is flown out to Japan to become the face of Suntory Whisky. Neato.

Notes from Bounty Archive Field Mission Japan:

I first saw this Bounty in Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days [2023]. The film follows our humble protagonist as he goes about his daily life. Before heading-off for a day of cleaning toilets, he begins each morning by extracting a Coffee BOSS from the vending machine outside his apartment at dawn.

This thrust Coffee BOSS into the mythical category I call “Food and bev from television/movies that we all want to try type sh*t” (think Krabby Patty, or Slurm cola from Futurama).

Naturally, once in Japan I quickly picked up a lil habit.

With vending machines on every other corner, the beck and call of the BOSS was hard to ignore. During a 10 minute stroll though metropolitan Tokyo, one is confronted at least 14 times with the decision whether or not to purchase a Coffee BOSS. I didn’t fight back. Like ocean waves on a scorching summer’s day, I let the refreshing waters of Coffee BOSS wash over me at regular intervals. Wading in the ocean of BOSS was lovely until one evening I swam one stroke too far from shore.

It was the plasticine artificial banana-flavored BOSS that brought an end to my love affair. One sip and I was convinced I’d swallowed a sheet of banana scratch-and-sniff stickers from the Scholastic book fair.

This incident was likely the wake-up call I needed. After all, this is a canned coffee beverage we are talking about.

Was Coffee BOSS always cooked and I never realized? Or was this just a simple case of too much of a good thing? I dunno.

All I can say is if you’re looking to give Coffee BOSS a try, keep it basic with the cafe au lait flavor.