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Wow Place #265: Japanese Gashapons
When I was a kid, I collected everything: stamps, coins, bubblegum cards, bottle caps, tv guides – even firecracker labels (the artful wrapping paper surrounding the firecrackers). One of my favorite collectibles was super balls, those bouncy, rubber spheres I got from my dentist (a much-appreciated bribe) as well as from what we kids called gumball machines. I’m embarrassed to admit that I still have the stamps and coins, just in case they’re actually worth something. The rest of my collections, alas, have gone the way of the dodo.
Thankfully, the passion for collecting is alive and well in Japan in the form of “gashapons,” sometimes referred to as “capsule toys.” Interestingly, the term “gashapon” is onomatopoeic for two Japanese sounds: gasha or gacha, for the hand-cranking action of the toy vending maching, and pon for the toy capsule landing in the action tray. Pretty cool, if you think about it. You crank the machine, the toy plops in a tray – and the two sounds form the word for the gift you receive.
Now, when I was young, you didn’t have a lot of gumball machines to choose from. If you were lucky, the local supermarket or drug store might have three or four devices, most of which were filled with candy like Chiclets or jaw breakers. In Japan, however, they’ve taken it to a whole other level.
Unlike the coin-operated toy vending machines seen around the world, featuring cheap, low-quality products sold for a quarter or two, gashapons tend to be more upscale. Constructed from high-grade PVC plastic with intricately molded and painted features, a typical gashapon toy might cost $1-5. Many of them are considered collector’s items and released in sets, with each set having a number of figures to collect. Gashapons are, by nature, a “blind purchase,” meaning you insert a coin and hope to get a toy or figure you desire. Sometimes it works out—more often you receive the same item repeatedly.
Needless to say, like anything that becomes popular, special stores exist for the serious gashapon collector who wants to bypass the randomness of the blind vending machines. Just head to Tokyo’s Akihabara or Osaka’s “Den-Den Town” to purchase a full set of figurines—for premium prices.
Myself, I like to just wander into one of the omnipresent gashapon stores that you find in most any shopping mall or gallery in Japan, and just look around. Here I might find anywhere from 50-500 machines offering capsule toys from the world of manga, video games, anime or the American entertainment industry. (There are risqué female figurines as well, but I won’t go into that.)
Want a Hello Kitty gashapon? You’ll find it in a second. How about Ultraman, or Doraemon, or Super Mario? No problem. Japanese pop culture is fully represented in the gashapon universe, in all its sickly-sweet cuteness. What gets me, however, are all the oddball items. Like a sushi ring for your finger. Or a Doritos commemorative potato-chip item. Or a plastic Denny’s milkshake. Some other particularly odd examples include:
• A set of trees each representing one of the four seasons, with each tree featuring a little, shocked face
• A Buddhist monk frozen in a block of ice
• Mom’s curry – you get a handwritten note (actually written by hand) from someone’s mom, sharing their family’s curry recipe
• A grey-and-white cat laying on top of a sushi rice, wrapped in a belt of nori, wearing an elementary school student’s dusty-pink leather backpack
• A realistic bathtub complete with grout stains
And finally there’s this one, the king of all collectibles IMHO:
• A salaryman’s head with a hinge at the back. When you open up the skull, you find a little alien inside, sitting inside his control pod, operating the human. Accompanying the alien is a little scrap of paper describing the alien’s backstory, ie. how these aliens were infiltrating our society and observing us from within their faux human vehicles.
What can I say? Come to Japan for the temples, the geisha and the bullet trains. Stay for the gashapons.
(Sadly, most of us leave our collecting days behind when we reach adulthood. There are exceptions of course. I have way too many t-shirts for my own good. I have a relative with a whole wall of tiny spoons from all over the world. A buddy of mine in London collects 1930s art deco items. You get the picture. Still, most of us are just trying to get by in an increasingly-expense world. Who has the money (or the space) to collect stuff? So what can we collect as adults that won’t break the bank (or cause our partner to ask for a divorce)? How about friends? How about memories? How about experiences? What are YOU collecting?)