To the list of unlikely winners of the pandemic add Japan’s hundreds of thousands of capsule vending machines. Called gachapon — onomatopoeia that captures the sound of the little plastic bubbles as they tumble through the machines’ works and land with a comic book thump — they dispense toys at random with the turn of a dial. Hundreds of new products are introduced each month, and videos of gachapon shopping sprees rack up millions of views.
The toys, also known as gachapon, have traditionally been aimed at children (think cartoon and video game characters). But their exploding popularity has been accompanied, or perhaps driven, by a surge in what the industry calls “original” goods geared toward adults — everything from wearable bonnets for cats to replicas of everyday objects, the more mundane the better.
Novelty is a key competition metric for the industry. The pleasure of gachapon comes not so much from the toys themselves — they have a brief half-life — but the fun of buying them: the joy of encountering each month’s unexpected new products, the slot-machine thrill of not knowing what you’re going to get.
Keita Nishimura, the chief executive of another gachapon maker, Toys Spirits, describes the process of designing the toys as half art, half engineering challenge. It’s a three-dimensional haiku defined by price (cheap enough to be sold profitably for a few coins) and size (the capsules are generally about two inches wide).
At Toys Spirits, the focus is on usable items. Recent hits have included a water cooler that dispenses ant-size droplets and a shaved ice machine that makes real shaved ice — syrup not included. In search of maximum authenticity, Mr. Nishimura had both toys certified kitchen-safe by Japan’s food safety regulator.
Source: Dooley, B., & Ueno, H. (2021, October 8). A tiny gas meter? the more mundane the better for Japan’s capsule toys. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/08/business/japan-capsule-toys-gachapon.html?searchResultPosition=37
Analysis: Novelty and collector’s items are definitely an avenue to explore considering this is the origin of the Wright Brothers and there is so much opportunity to miniaturize their inventions. The idea of making a collectible, buildable, and functional mini plane would entice a lot of people. There’s a reason Lego is so successful.
