In a bizarre new take on the business of idol merchandise, two Japanese idols of a J-pop girl group sold their leftover bathwater last month.
Tenka no Chanyuki and Asuka Rei from The Banana Monkeys soaked in a tub that had turned purple from bath powder, which their label claimed to be particularly expensive.
And so to recover the costs, their management decided to scoop out the leftover water and sell them in bottles.
“It’s water that idols soaked in, so it’s definitely clean,” The Banana Monkeys’ official Twitter account said, according to SoraNews24. “You can drink it or add a little to your own tub and feel like you’re taking a bath together with the idols.”
Recommending the leftover bathwater as a beverage can be questionable, but it’s also unclear whether the bottles made any sales.
They are sold each for a whopping 100,000 yen ($900) — which actually happens to be a sale price on Mercari, a secondhand online store.
The listing has since been deleted, but no one has come forward to claim a purchase.
Japanese Twitter users weren’t fans of the idea:
“‘It’s clean because the idols soaked in’? WHAT?”
“Someday I will start selling pee.”
“Only an idiot would buy this.”
“This is beyond ridiculous.”
“It’s disgusting.”
However, while that tweet contained a link to the product’s page on Mercari, the listing has since been deleted. It’s unclear if the group, after further consideration, decided not to sell the bathwater, or if it perhaps sold all of the liquid it had available. If it’s the latter, no one has come forward claiming to be one of the buyers, though perhaps that’s because being the owner of a bottle of used idol bathwater isn’t the sort of thing most people would want to tell the world about.