Farmville, Mafia Wars and YoVille have more than 100 million players combined, making the games creators, Zynga, the new force in gaming. Last week, Zynga demonstrated its new clout, cutting a better-than-expected five-year deal to remain exclusively on Facebook. As an encore, Zynga struck a major in-store summer promotion with the 7-Eleven chain of convenience stores that span across much of the U.S. and Canada marking its ascendancy as a new pop culture brand to be reckoned with.So if you’re in a 7-Eleven store this summer you’ll see Farmville characters on Slurpee drink cups and on cartons of ice cream and hot dog wrappers. These purchases will come with special codes that can then be redeemed for virtual goods, opening up a new page in retail promotions: the exchange of actual goods for virtual ones. What kind of goods, you wonder? Well, if you buy a carton of ice cream at 7-Eleven you qualify for a Farmville cow.

Evidently, a lot of thought went into matching actual purchases with virtual goods. As Adweek explains:

The companies have matched up items with the games they think fit most. The male-heavy audience for Mafia Wars can get codes on hot dogs, wings and chips while female-skewing FarmVille is targeted with offers for fresh fruit, bottled water and sandwiches.

Frankly, we’ve been wondering for some time when Zynga (or Facebook for that matter) would move into the world of mainstream brand tie-ins. The games developer been working with 7-Eleven since the autumn, but we could see even bigger possible promotions. Think of a Coke-branded teddy bear for Valentine’s Day or Red Bull sponsoring a hit job on Mafia Wars.

We hold out hope.

Editor’s Note: Want to learn more about social media best practice? Join our LinkedIn Group and enjoy a great discount on attending the Social Media Conference, June 22.