Why Smoker Got His Own Coca-Cola One Piece Strap in 2007

Smoker One Piece Figure Strap — 2007 Coca-Cola Japan Promo

A Campaign Item, Not a Retail Toy

This PVC figure strap depicts Smoker, one of the most recognizable officers in the world of One Piece, and was produced as a promotional item for a Coca-Cola Japan tie-in campaign in 2007. The format — a molded PVC figure fitted with a metal swivel clip at the top and a metal ring at the base — is characteristic of the cell-phone strap style that defined Japanese character goods in the mid-2000s. The exact distribution method (whether it functioned as a purchase bonus, a mail-in prize, or another campaign format) is not confirmed, but it circulated domestically within Japan rather than through any standard retail toy channel. That distinction separates it from the broadly available figures of the same era.

One Piece at Its Peak, and the Character at the Center

One Piece, created by Eiichiro Oda, launched in Weekly Shonen Jump in 1997 and began its Fuji TV anime run in October 1999. By 2007 — the year this strap was produced — the series was eight to nine seasons deep, with the manga well past volume forty and having recently concluded the Water Seven and Enies Lobby arc, widely considered one of the series’ high points. The franchise has since surpassed 500 million copies sold worldwide as of 2024, placing it among the most significant manga and anime properties ever made.

Smoker — formally known as “White Hunter” Smoker — is a Marine officer introduced during the Loguetown arc, just before the Alabasta saga. He wields the Moku Moku no Mi, a Logia-type Devil Fruit granting control over smoke. His visual identity is immediately distinctive: cigars held between his teeth, a white trench coat, and deep green fur trim at the collar and cuffs. The figure reflects these details in the design language of its time, faithful to the anime’s look in that period. By 2007, Smoker had spent years in the series and built a following independent of the main crew — an antagonist with a defined moral code and a persistent presence in the story.

The Cultural Context Behind This Kind of Collectible

This item belongs to a specific category of Japanese goods: corporate tie-in promotional merchandise. Through the 2000s, beverage, food, and fast-food brands in Japan regularly partnered with major anime properties to produce figures, straps, and small toys distributed as campaign bonuses or prizes. These weren’t manufactured for open retail shelves, and their availability was tied directly to how and where the campaign ran. Coca-Cola Japan participated in several such collaborations during this era, with One Piece among the properties it worked with more than once.

The cell-phone strap format itself is part of what makes items like this culturally specific. Strap customization was a genuine everyday practice in Japan during this decade, and a significant portion of anime merchandise was produced in this form as a result. For collectors outside Japan, that context adds a layer of period authenticity the format carries on its own. The choice of Smoker as the subject also matters to a certain segment of collectors: rather than leading with the franchise’s protagonist, the campaign featured a morally complex rival character with a strong independent identity — the kind of selection that interests fans who look beyond the obvious leads. The item is an officially licensed product under Shueisha and Toei Animation, the respective rights holders for the manga and anime, which places it clearly within the legitimate goods history of the franchise.