Gashapon
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Gashapon (ガチャポン in katakana - more accurately, gachapon), also referred to as "trading toy", is a Japanese onomatopoeia, made up of two sounds: "gacha" for the turning of a crank on a toy vending machine, and "pon" for the sound of the toy capsule dropping into the receptacle. It is used to describe both the machines themselves, and any toy obtained from them.
Gashapon machines are similar to the coin-op toy vending machines seen outside of grocery stores and other retailers in the United States. While coin-op vending toys are usually cheap, low-quality products, sold for a quarter or 50 cents, Japanese Gashapon can cost anywhere from 100 - 500 yen (Equal to $1–$5 US) and are normally a much higher quality product.
They are often constructed from high-grade PVC plastic, and contain more molding detail and carefully painted features. However, these are not simply toys: they are collector's items, with rare ones fetching extremely high prices.
Gashapon toys are often based on popular character licenses from Japanese manga, video games, anime and popular icons. These highly detailed toys based on popular culture icons have found a large following among adults in Japan, and the trend is filtering to the West with other popular culture influences such as anime and manga. It is not at all uncommon to see sets based on licenses explicitly for adults, with figures of naked or near-naked women.
[edit] Collections and sets
Virtually all gashapon are released in sets - each series will have a number of figures to collect. They are, by nature, a "blind purchase"; people insert coins and hope to get the toy or figure they desire. It may become frustrating, as one risks obtaining the same capsule repeatedly.
Most collectors will buy sets from gashapon stores in places such as Osaka's Nihonbashi (den den town), or Tokyo's Akihabara. Depending on the store, the sets are usually cheaper than buying them randomly out of a machine.
[edit] Video games
Gashapon machines and their random payouts have inspired trinket-collection mini-games in many videogames, most notably the Legend of Zelda series' similarly-named "Gasha Trees" in Oracle of Ages and Oracle of Seasons, and, to a much higher extent, the random figurine payout in The Minish Cap. Gashapon have also appeared in some Mario games such as Mario Party 5 and well as Super Smash Bros. Melee where the player inserts a desired amount of coins and gets a trophy of a Nintendo-related thing in return. In both The Minish Cap and Super Smash Bros. Melee, the more the player spends in one go, the higher the chance of getting a new item in return.
The gashapon concept is taken to the next level in SD Gundam Gashapon Wars, a game based on the SD Gundam television series, in which a gamer can activate extra characters from the game by buying certain series of SD Gundam gashapon toys in real life, namely SD Full Color STAGE:61, then use the password bundled with the toy to unlock the corresponding character in the video game. This is the same marketing tactic used by Kinder Surprise for the online surprises, except there is no online access involved.
The machines also appear in the Dreamcast game Shenmue, in which the main character Ryo Hazuki could spend yen to collect various figurines, including series of characters from the Virtua Fighter and Sonic the Hedgehog series of games.
In Mega Man X: Command Mission, gashapon machines can be found in various places, and contain figures of various Mega Man characters.
They are seen in MapleStory, in which real money is used to buy tickets for the machines in towns. The gashapon contain scrolls and valuable items.
They are also seen in Killer 7, in which all of the figures are required to open a specific door.
There is a secret stage in Sonic 3 that involves Sonic in a giant gashapon machine in order to get power-ups.
During the course of Resident Evil 4, the player can take part in a shooting range mini-game to unlock models of characters and enemies that are viewable in the Keys/Treasure inventory. There is one figure in each set that requires a higher score to unlock, which could be considered the 'rare' figures.
