Well, these have been in the queue for nearly two years! A mate, Adrian, was doing the Cherry Blossom trail in Japan, with his wife, and I said to him "Oh, you'll be able to fill your boots with Gashapon!", which required a quick explanation of the particularly Japanese take on capsule-toys, as they evolved from Western gum-ball machines, themselves evolved from earlier, Victorian postcard dispensers, a mutual friend - Gareth - backed up my enthusiasm, and Adrian was clearly intrigued enough to look them up while he was out there.
What I didn't know was that when he came back, he would present me with results of his research as a fiftieth birthday present! So we're looking at them over the next few days, purely as a brief overview, their full story is far greater and there are catalogue-type books on the subject available in Japanese, rather like the O-Ei-A books on the similar, but tending to more juvenile, Kinder Toys.
So, Gashapon, from Gasha (the cranking of a 'one-armed-bandit' handle) and Pon, the actual capsule; Japanese capsule toys; not the occasional tray of chocolate eggs, or the odd machine outside a convenience store, but rather a semi-industrialised craze, primarily 're-invented' by Bandai in the 1970's, with Tomy ('Gacha') and Kaiyodo also heavily involved now. There have, since the late 1990-early 2000's, been whole stores dedicated to banks of the machines, which we are looking at here, all shot by Adrian.
Clockwise from the top left we have, 'luck dip' mystery prizes, highly detailed miniature firearms, specifically semi-automatic military rifles, I guess pistols or machine-guns will be separate issues/series? Some kind of miniature viewers (?), construction-brick bunk-beds, cat's arse rings (who knew there was even a market for them!) and
Tama and Friends keyrings - more
Hello Kitty knock-off?
Squishies,
manga deforms, some kind of pump-dispenser keyrings (?), Halloween wallets, more cutesy keyrings and miniature lunch-bags - it's quite an eclectic collection of subjects, and materials, especially when compared with
Kinder*, but that - in part - explained by the larger capsules, and the fact that adult collectors don't hide under Edwardian leftover shame as we do, in the west, the Japanese 'grown-ups' happily collecting them as an expression of
Shōwa nostalgia.
*Kinder do seem to be moving (at a glacial speed) in a similar direction, with more keyrings, phone-hangers and luggage tag type prizes, appearing these days.
A canyon of gift-dispencers!
Choices, choices!
Advertising display cabinet, I believe all the larger
Gashapon stores have something like this, with a selection of current of recent offerings, to kick-start the consumer urge, among the undecided!
Platform shoes and fishing lures! And the lures, conveniently telling us - in English - that they are the 5th wave, I think? And - even more weirdly - without actually knowing much about it, I suspect, you could remove them from the keyrings, tie them into your tackle line, and use them to fish?!
Miniaturised, or doll's house scaled, tea-ceremony furniture, and necklaces of . . . Japanese mythological themes?
Miniaturised foods or foodstuffs seem common themes, both modern and nostalgic, and the display of cartoon,
Manga or
Anime figural models, above the machines, may be some of the staff's own duplicates? Or maybe leftover/end-of-line stuff, or damaged capsule comtents . . . something like that?
Likewise, here, where more necklaces and keyrings feature in the machines themselves, including miniature beach sets, blood bags (?!!) and two different '
Juggler' related things I can only guess - badly - at!
Watch-battery illuminated, stand-ups of Harry Potter characters.
Sci-fi feature quite heavily, along with historicals, and here we see stuff related to The Rocketeer, Batman, Star Wars and The Avengers
More Anime/Manga stuff, either side of miniaturised Pioneer Hi-Fi decks!
An amazing maze!
A mystery to finish, not speaking Japanese, I can only guess these are
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland coasters? Featuring Sir John Tenniel's (the first commercial illustrator to be knighted) original artwork? Which would require the largest size of capsule? There are different sizes and designs of Capsule, as we'll see working through them, while a few sets seem to be cheaper or more expensive than the 'standard'
Gashapon.
Many thanks to Adrian for all these images, which give us a good flavour of the subject, and for the toys which we will be looking at over the next few posts.
