We’ve already pointed out the absurd waste of good advertising space represented by those boring unadorned green British Telecom pay telephone cards, but Japan’s Nippon Telegraph & Telephone is now showing Telecom to be a mere babe in arms when it comes to commercial savvy: the New York Times reports that in Japan, as well as advertising – ideal for inexpensive commercial gifts, there are phone cards carrying pictures of anything from Mount Fuji through Sumo wrestlers to the Princess of Wales and James Dean, with the result that a thriving trade has built up among people who build collections of the things and care much more about the picture than whether there is any residual cash left locked in the card.
