Sometimes the best ideas are born through serendipity.

In a state of tiredness, a Japanese student (@tn_mogura) accidentally plugged his earphones into the straw hole of a carton of Marusan soy milk. The hilarious picture that he posted on Twitter garnered over 110,000 likes and more than 33,000 retweets.

The photo, and accompanying story, was so popular that even Marusan themselves got wind of it. Now, thanks to this viral tweet, the music playing soy milk carton has become a reality!

Marusan soy milk is a very popular beverage in Japan. It’s affordable and comes in various delicious flavours denoted by colourful, cute cartons. Vegans visiting Japan are often very pleased with the readily available range of non-dairy milks that can be found.

The packaging design is instantly recognizable in Japan, and therefore the perfect base to inspire goods.

Although this may look like a usual Marusan carton of green tea flavoured soy milk, in reality, it’s hiding a fully functioning mp3 player inside. The headphones plug into, you guessed it, the straw hole. The video shows side by side just how alike it is to a real Marusan carton.

Mp3 players are a bit old school, and the carton’s design gives a bit of a retro feel too. It’s perfect for anime fans, people who love classic Japanese design and, possibly, music-loving vegans who want to promote the joys of soy.

We tried it out for ourselves, and taking it everywhere, filled up with our favourite tunes, it started to feel like the perfect kawaii companion. Since it’s the same size as a drink carton, perhaps it’s not the most easily portable of all music players. But you can easily carry it around with you as an accessory to inject a heavy dose of anime aesthetics into your life.

There’s lots of cute touches, such as the bar code music notes, and instead of nutritional information there’s a breakdown of the emotions that went into making the product such as ‘love – 100%’, ‘regret – 0%’.

Although it's not currently for sale, Japan residents have the chance to win one for themselves! If you go to the Marusan Mp3 Player website and fill in the form at the bottom, you can be one of ten people to win a music player!

Just be careful not to mix it up with your actual carton of Marusan, otherwise you could end up with a messy situation…