A Sherlockian Themed Phone Card from Reoma World

‘”Excuse my amusement, Mr Holmes”

– The Adventure of the Illustrious Client (ILLU)

Many of the visitors to this website probably recall the days when pay phones were a common site when walking down a city sidewalk or inside a hotel lobby. You would drop a few coins into the phone, dial the number and make your call. Perhaps you would use a calling card if you were making a long distance call. In the mid 1990’s, prepaid calling cards started to appear by some enterprising companies, such as AmeriVox. These prepaid calling cards would generally have 50 call units that would be redeemed at a fixed ratio as the call progressed, until the card would have no remaining call units.

In Asia, prepaid calling cards are quite prevalent and frequently used to promote products or services. Public phones are equipped with card readers. A user would insert the prepaid card into the reader, make the phone call and when finished remove the card. The card reader would punch a small hole into the card, prior to its removal, showing approximately how many call units remain, if any.

The phone card pictured above was issued by Reoma World, and was good for 50 call units. Reoma World is an amusement park located on the island province of Shikoku in Japan. It opened in 1991 and closed, for financial reasons, in 2000. It reopened as New Reoma World in 2004.  You can see the images of Peddy and Polly (think of Mickey and Minnie) on the entrance unit in the above picture. Notice that Peddy is wearing a deerstalker!

We have Peddy’s character – dressed like Sherlock Holmes with deerstalker and inverness cape – appearing with 12 other characters found at the theme park. The “fine print” on the back indicates that the card is intended for use in Japan.

Your editor would be very grateful to be contacted by any Japanese Sherlockians, who could translate this and other Japanese phone cards.