“Nagano 1998 – Snowlets” (スノーレッツ), Rare Original Japanese Olympic Mascot Promotional Poster 1993, B1 Size (c. 72 × 103 cm) HAK-A
This is an original Japanese B1 official promotional poster produced for the Nagano 1998 Winter Olympic Games, featuring the four celebrated Olympic mascots collectively known as the Snowlets.
Produced in Japan in 1993, a full five years before the XVIII Olympic Winter Games opened in Nagano, this is an early official NAOC promotional piece rather than later souvenir merchandise. The Olympic Museum preserves an example of this same poster in its permanent collection, cataloguing it as a Nagano 1998 mascot poster measuring 103 × 72.5 cm and crediting its creation to the Nagano Organizing Committee and Landor Associates.
The Nagano Games eventually took place from 7–22 February 1998, becoming only the second Winter Olympic Games held in Japan after Sapporo 1972.
Design
This is one of the most charming and graphically distinctive pieces from the entire Nagano 1998 visual programme. Against an enormous, almost uninterrupted white field stand the four Snowlets—Sukki, Nokki, Lekki and Tsukki—rendered as brilliantly coloured, deliberately irregular young owls.
Their loose outlines and almost childlike forms are a striking departure from the polished, three-dimensional character mascots that became increasingly common in international sports marketing. The Snowlets instead resemble spontaneous ink drawings brought to life with flat fields of saturated purple, turquoise, orange, green, pink and yellow.
From left to right, the four characters are presented with subtly different forms and personalities. Their huge yellow eyes create a common visual identity, while their asymmetrical bodies, tiny feet and individually shaped beaks give each owl its own character.
The name SNOWLETS appears immediately below in an expressive hand-drawn black script, accompanied by a tiny leaf motif and the Japanese スノーレッツ beneath. The informal lettering perfectly complements the mascots' intentionally spontaneous drawing style.
The name itself contains several layers of wordplay. “Snow” evokes winter and the Winter Olympics; “let's” functions as an invitation to join the celebration; and “owlets” means young owls. The individual names—Sukki, Nokki, Lekki and Tsukki—also combine phonetically to form “Snowlets.”
Owls were selected for their long-standing cultural association with wisdom, while the use of four characters also refers to the four-year Olympic cycle. The four mascots additionally came to represent fire, air, earth and water, reinforcing the environmental and natural themes central to Nagano's Olympic identity.
The upper margin carries restrained bilingual typography:
THE XVIII OLYMPIC WINTER GAMES, NAGANO 1998
1998 長野オリンピック冬季競技大会
The extraordinary amount of empty space surrounding the mascots is integral to the composition. Rather than filling the sheet with sponsors, sporting imagery or elaborate backgrounds, the design allows four relatively small characters to occupy a monumental white B1 field. The result is quintessentially Japanese in its use of negative space, visual restraint and playful asymmetry.
At the bottom sits the official multicoloured Nagano 1998 Snowflower emblem, its petal-like forms representing winter athletes while simultaneously suggesting a snowflake or alpine flower. Beneath it appear the Olympic rings and the NAOC identity of the Nagano Olympic Organizing Committee.
The poster also retains the complete original institutional information for the Organizing Committee in both Japanese and English—including its Nagano address, telephone, fax and period telex details—giving the sheet the character of genuine working Olympic promotional material rather than a later decorative print.
Most importantly, the tiny production inscription at lower right reads:
© 1993 NAOC TM NAOC 6-001 Printed in Japan
This firmly dates the poster to 1993, placing it at the beginning of the multi-year promotional campaign for an Olympic Games that would not take place until 1998.
Historical Significance
The Snowlets became among the most recognisable symbols of Nagano 1998 and represent a particularly distinctive chapter in the history of Olympic mascot design.
The four owls were created by Landor Associates for the Nagano Organizing Committee. Their names were ultimately selected from tens of thousands of public suggestions, and their deliberately unconventional appearance distinguished Nagano from the more anthropomorphic mascot traditions of previous Olympic Games.
The official Japanese Olympic Committee explains that the owl was chosen as an animal found widely around the world and traditionally regarded as the “wisdom of the forest.” The Snowlets were conceived to communicate the philosophy of the Nagano Games to both children and adults and to work across cultures.
Their four-part identity was unusually sophisticated for Olympic branding. Rather than creating a single mascot, Nagano presented a family of four related but individually recognisable characters, allowing them to function together as a graphic system across posters, pins, toys, publications and official merchandise.
The Snowlets eventually became enormously popular in Japan and remain among the most immediately recognisable pieces of Nagano 1998 iconography.
Rarity
The Olympic Museum itself holds this exact Snowlets poster design in its collection, classifying it specifically as a Nagano 1998 mascot poster. Its recorded dimensions of 103 × 72.5 cm correspond to the Japanese B1 format.
This institutional documentation is particularly useful because it confirms that the design was conceived as an official large-format Olympic poster, rather than simply an enlargement of later consumer artwork.
The early 1993 production date further distinguishes it from the enormous quantity of merchandise created as the Games approached in 1998. This poster belongs to the formative promotional period in which Nagano's Olympic visual identity—including the Snowflower emblem and Snowlets—was being introduced to the public.
Large B1 sheets were inherently vulnerable to damage through handling and display. The design makes preservation even more challenging because virtually the entire composition consists of exposed white paper. Foxing, yellowing, fingerprints, adhesive staining, moisture marks and edge damage that might disappear into a darker composition become immediately conspicuous here.
The combination of official NAOC provenance, 1993 dating, large B1 format, Landor Associates mascot design, Snowflower Olympic identity and exceptional preservation makes this an important piece of Japanese Olympic graphic history.
Condition
Excellent+ condition overall, particularly impressive for a large-format white-field poster now more than three decades old.
The extensive cream-white field remains exceptionally clean and bright, while the purple, turquoise, orange, green, pink and yellow colouring of the four Snowlets retains excellent saturation. The black hand-drawn outlines and SNOWLETS typography remain crisp, and the multicoloured Nagano emblem and Olympic rings are beautifully preserved.
The poster remains unbacked and without prominent structural fold lines. There are only light handling impressions, gentle natural paper undulation and a small number of shallow creases visible under close inspection, principally toward the outer margins and lower portion of the sheet. There is also minor corner and edge wear consistent with age and the substantial B1 format.
Importantly for a poster dominated by unprinted white space, there is no significant foxing, widespread staining or major discolouration.
The reverse is remarkably clean and bright, showing only minor handling and natural age-related paper movement.
Once professionally mounted and framed, this poster will display superbly, with its vast negative space and brilliantly coloured Snowlets giving it an unusually contemporary graphic presence.
Please review all photographs carefully; they show the exact poster for sale, front and back, including detailed imagery of the original ©1993 NAOC / NAOC 6-001 / Printed in Japan production markings.
This is an original Japanese B1 Nagano 1998 Winter Olympic Snowlets promotional poster, printed in Japan in 1993.
It is not a reproduction or a later reprint.
It is over 32 years old.
Certificate of Authenticity included.
