Remember the fifty-cent capsule toys you'd beg your mother for on the way out of the grocery store? Like most of childhood, the irresistable urge to buy every toy in sight miraculously precedes your possession of money. Gooey, green slime and a bright yellow water-growth gargoyle are my most memorable grabs; well-worth the dollar wasted, er, invested between the two.
Nostalgia alone couldn't draw my wallet out for capsule toys - but, as usual, I can't speak for the Japanese. And they've conveniently removed the vending machine middleman:
About two years ago the Japan Toy Association created a new "capsule toy" division and began collecting statistics on the goods. Last year's capsule toy market totaled 26 billion yen a year, according to the association's figures. That was 24 percent higher than during the previous year.A lot of the toys that are being produced are based on themes from the '70s and '80s. Bandai, the biggest producer of capsule toys, brought out its "my elementary school" miniature toys in November last year. Since then, a total of 2.4 million toys from three series have been snapped up by customers. The figures included school backpacks, school lunches with milk, and familiar school notebooks. Many of the customers were reportedly women in their 30s.
Yujin, another major capsule toy maker found success with its "science and learning mini collection." Within two weeks of the release of the series last year 300,000 toys were sold. Although the toys are no bigger than the palm of a person's hand, buyers can actually perform experiments with them. Also well received were capsules containing sets to raise the tiny marine creatures known as Sea-Monkeys. These products drew in male customers in their 20s and 30s.
Of course, chance is what made the capsule purchase fun:
In the past, capsule toy machines were generally used to fill empty space in stores, but since enthusiastic capsule toy fans now often buy whole sets of toys, it is not uncommon to see leisure facilities or supermarkets lining up as many as 100 machines. The Gachapon Kaikan store in Akihabara has 300 dispensers.
We should expect a country with scarce real estate to teach us, once again, that the best goodies don't always come in large packages.