These Star Wars Coca-Cola Bottles Have Flexible OLED Panels That Glow

Dhir Acharya - Dec 06, 2019

How far can the applications of flexible screens expend other than expensive foldable phones and bendable phone-watches? Coca-Cola is the answer.

How far can the applications of flexible screens expend other than expensive foldable phones and bendable phone-watches? I think you won’t be able to help smiling when you hear this, Coca-Cola is selling plastic bottles at the price of Rs 143 or Rs 214 that have a glowing lightsaber on its label.

As part of the marketing campaign for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker that will release mid-December, merchandise at every store is slowly wearing Star Wars branding. And Coca-Cola has been wrapping its plastic bottles with a flexible, thin OLED panel with electronics that include a battery enabling the images of the lightsabers held by Kylo Ren and Rey to glow.

Currently, flexible OLED displays are too expensive to implement in consumer electronics, so this little application might be the best at this point, not to mention it’s fun to look at. This type of screen is self-illuminating so there’s no need for a backlight, meaning the panels can be ultra-thin and tucked behind the label wrapped around the bottle without causing any bumps.

Moreover, you can toss these bottles around as much as you want, the shipping can make them bang one another up and the LED still works.

However, Coca-Cola is selling these bottles in Singapore only, with 8,000 units produced for the No Sugar branding. The company has also distributed the bottles randomly to 45 secret places around the country. This way, the company can avoid the situation in which fans queue up at certain stores to get one for themselves.

And in case you get one on your hand, keep in mind that the OLED’s battery life is only around 40 minutes, which means you can illuminate the saber for about 500 times.