What is Amazon's Treasure Truck?

A few folks in Seattle on Monday started tweeting sightings of something called the Treasure Truck, a large boxy Amazon truck driving around the streets of their city. One picture on Twitter shows a rolling digital sign on the truck, saying "What's on the truck today?"

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There's little information on what exactly this truck (or trucks?) is, though a Web page on Amazon.com provides a few tiny clues. The Seattle-based online retailer says the Treasure Truck is will be "coming soon" in Seattle and it will be tied in with Amazon's mobile shopping app.

The Treasure Truck also has a Twitter account (naturally, @treasuretruck). It has yet to tweet anything but the bio box says: "Hello Seattle, Treasure Truck is on its way."

An Amazon representative declined to comment on the truck or what's inside it.

If the truck is in fact part of a promotional stunt, it won't be the first time Amazon has done such a thing. Last year, the company placed a mysterious giant orange storage locker in a San Francisco plaza. Soon after, it disclosed that the locker was part of a promotion to get people to tweet "#giantlocker" in exchange for prizes -- with the grand prize being a car that was, of course, sitting inside the locker.

Since Amazon, eBay and other online retailers don't have a store presence in the physical world, doing promotions like these are an important way to get out in front of customers and remind them to go browsing on their sites.

Is there another car in the Treasure Truck? Perhaps, but here's hoping its actual treasure.