Hello!
I am writing about this extremely undocumented promotion that happened in Finland in the years 2001-2002 just to leave some information for those who may be interested to have more knowledge about this and to provide some insight to the collecting part of this promotion.
History:
In 2001 one of the largest Finnish beverage companies Oy Sinebrychoff Ab launched a promotion featuring Pokemon for the launch of generation 2 games.
Picture source: https://x.com/KvaakFi/status/641129338667188224?lang=fi
This soft drink was sold in 0.5 liter bottles and was flavored as raspberry-vanilla. The original version of this drink was blue however it was quickly changed to dark red as seen in the picture of an ad.
These bottles involved a way to enter a raffle to win a Game Boy Color and Pokemon Silver or Pokemon Gold game. The raffle was held at the end of every month until 6th of December 2002. The way to enter the raffle was to color the picture of the Pokemon that was on the reverse side of the front label and send it in for the raffle. You could have also entered the raffle via a postcard that included a drawn picture of a Pokemon of your choice.
Pic of the back label that has the raffle info:
The Front Labels:
The front labels came with 8 colored confirmed variants, it is not fully confirmed by official sources that are these the only variants there were:
However someone on instagram made a post about this soft drink and claimed to have gotten the pictures directly from Sinebrychoff official instagram account which shows only these 8 variants.
Source: https://www.instagram.com/p/DaLPxgJirw8/?img_index=1
Some of the labels have black colored Nintendo logo and the others have red. It is not known which was first and why they changed it.
Front Label Reverse Side:
Now this is where things get difficult, as mentioned before this promotion is extremely undocumented. There are hardly any info how many different Pokemon were there to be colored to send off for the raffle. These labels hardly ever show up in online auction sites and there are hardly any posts about them on internet forums, blogs etc.
The back label states that the raffle includes “all of the Pokemon” meaning that they included all of the Pokemon from Gen 1 and 2 but there is no info if all of the 251 Pokemon truly included in the labels.
I personally have 74 unique Pokemon in my collection of 125 labels.
Gen 1:
- Venusaur — #003
- Charizard — #006
- Squirtle — #007
- Blastoise — #009
- Metapod — #011
- Kakuna — #014
- Pidgeot — #018
- Pikachu — #025
- Jigglypuff — #039
- Nidorina — #030
- Nidoqueen — #031
- Nidoking — #034
- Oddish — #043
- Gloom — #044
- Vileplume — #045
- Parasect — #047
- Venonat — #048
- Venomoth — #049
- Dugtrio — #051
- Meowth — #052
- Primeape — #057
- Arcanine — #059
- Poliwag — #060
- Kadabra — #064
- Alakazam — #065
- Bellsprout — #069
- Tentacruel — #073
- Ponyta — #077
- Slowpoke — #079
- Magnemite — #081
- Muk — #089
- Gengar — #094
- Krabby — #098
- Kingler — #099
- Voltorb — #100
- Electrode — #101
- Hitmonchan — #107
- Lickitung — #108
- Weezing — #110
- Rhyhorn — #111
- Rhydon — #112
- Horsea — #116
- Goldeen — #118
- Seaking — #119
- Staryu — #120
- Starmie — #121
- Scyther — #123
- Jynx — #124
- Electabuzz — #125
- Magmar — #126
- Tauros — #128
- Magikarp — #129
- Gyarados — #130
- Ditto — #132
- Eevee — #133
- Flareon — #136
- Kabutops — #141
- Moltres — #146
- Dragonair — #148
Gen 2:
- Cyndaquil — #155
- Sentret — #161
- Hoothoot — #163
- Mareep — #179
- Marill — #183
- Hoppip — #187
- Sunflora — #192
- Wooper — #194
- Quagsire — #195
- Girafarig — #203
- Pineco — #204
- Heracross — #214
- Ursaring — #217
- Donphan — #232
- Miltank — #241
- Blissey — #242
There is a Hoothoot variant that can be confirmed in a old collection site for Hoothoot/Noctowl found here: https://noctowl.weebly.com/flats1.html
There is a possible Rapidash variant in the archive of a Finnish auction site but as its in the archive it does not include picture or seller information so it cannot be confirmed for now.
One last thing I can confirm is that there are some variety with the labels regarding the colored front and reverse side as I have couple of labels that have different colored front and the reverse side features the same Pokemon, for example Pikachu - Kingler, Snubbul - Kingler.
________________________________
I would like to conclude this with some personal notes regarding these labels. This promotion happened 24-25 years ago and these labels are a rather unique promotion even on world scale and it happened in a population wise small country in northern Europe which makes these a bit weird to say the least.
These labels are very sensitive for moisture as they are very thin, making them bleed from the colored side to the reverse side rather easily as can be clearly seen on the Blissey label.
I have absolutely no idea how many of these still exist. The Hoothoot/Noctowl collector apparently missed one auction for the label and chased years for that Hoothoot afterwards while thinking that they will never get another chance.
There are couple of reasons why these are so scarce. One is the main use of these labels, they were used to enter the raffle so many of them got colored and send in. Second is that there is a deposit system for bottles in Finland, if you return the empty bottle to the store you will get 0,20€ money back per bottle for these 0.5l bottles. So some people who didn’t care about the raffle just took them back for recycling without removing the label or just tossed them away.
Before this post I tried to find as much info about these as possible, but these are a bit of a enigma even for Finns. Even the sources that I used in this post are basically saying the same “We don’t know how many of these exist” and the information was based on the couple of pictures of one or two of these labels. The collection that I posted is the largest known collection that is (now) documented, there might be bigger collection out there but they are no where to be seen.
I personally believe there was a label for each of the gen 1 and 2 Pokemon, but that is just my guess.
If anyone has more information about these or has other labels that are not listed here, please share them, would love to hear/see more!
If you plan to search for these labels, I truly wish you good luck!
P.S: The drink actually tasted pretty good back in the day!
i for sure have to add them in my wants but we’ll see if obtaining them ever happens based on what you wrote 
