Gashapon Kawaii

Taking a break from the hum dum of paper work and adulthood, I would like to introduce to you something Japanese...... Oh my, it are those eggs from Aliens? Perhaps Japanese aliens? Well, no, unlike the slimy kind of the former, this is Gashapon ^_^ Gas what? Well, here is a little explaination from Wikipedia.....

Gashapon (ガシャポン or sometimes ガチャポン in katakana), also referred to as "capsule 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-operated toy vending machines seen outside of grocery stores and other retailers in other countries. While coin-operated 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

This is how it looks like and the contents inside to capsule

As you can see it is finely detailed and painted for such a small item, very typical Japanese ^-^

Each gashapon is a series and you can collect them all

Here is the rest of the family, I have thus far three series from the Strategy of Gundam (SOG) line of gashapon, all of them are well detailed and very well made, just love them. You can even do limited poses as the joins and hands can be moved.

The Gundam manga and anime series have many universe or story lines which is not related to each other, this one is called UC or Universal Century, the original series, my favorite.

Reason for collecting them because I can relate to them and each have a story of its own and if you check out Wikipedia, each "robot" or mecha above have their own production notes as thought they are the real thing, truly fascinating ^_^

Not all gashapon toys comes in the same size or scale, this one is a lil bigger

I preferred these smaller ones because they are cheaper, paying a complete series for RM70 (avg 6-7 pcs per series) compare to bigger scaled and more detailed ones that can range from RM100 to 200++ each. Plus I will only need a small place to put them, bless!

Locally, you can get them at any Toys R Us, you can buy straight from the machine costing RM8 each but at random. Some hobby shops such as XL-Shop Dotcom do have stocks in complete series for sale or they can help order for you as well. There are also other less robotic and equally kawaii series to collect for boys and girls alike. Happy Gashapon-ing and have a great weekend. Cheers!