Dull toys shine in pandemic
Reproductions of everyday items from Japanese capsule vending machines are prized
TOKYO — Yoshiaki Yamanishi set out to create the most boring toy imaginable.
In the universe of Japanese capsule vending machines, the competition is strong. Anyone with pocket change could have been rewarded in recent months with a miniature toy gas meter that doubles as a step counter or a doll-size plastic gasoline can with a functioning nozzle.
But when Yamanishi landed upon the idea of making a series of ultrarealistic split-unit air-conditioners late last year, he was confident he had a hit. Aficionados across Japan rushed to snatch up the tiny machines, complete with air ducts and spinning fans.
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. But their popularity has been accompanied, or perhaps driven, by a surge in what the industry calls “original” goods geared toward adults — including wearable bonnets for cats and replicas of everyday objects, the more mundane the better.
Isolated in their plastic spheres, the tiny reproductions feel like a metaphor for COVID-19era life. On social media, people arrange their purchases in wistful tableaus of life outside the bubble. Some have faithfully recreated drab offices, outfitted with whiteboards and paper shredders.
For Yamanishi, whose company, Toys Cabin, is based near Tokyo, success is “not about whether it sells or not.”
“You want people to ask themselves, ‘Who in the world would buy this?’ ” he said.
In recent years, the answer is young women. They make up more than 70% of the market, and have been especially active in promoting the toys on social media, said Katsuhiko Onoo, head of the Japan Gachagacha Association. (Gachagacha is an alternative term for the toys.)
That enthusiasm has helped double the market for the toys over the last decade, with annual sales reaching nearly $360 million at more than 600,000 gachapon machines by 2019, the most recent year for which data is available.
The products are not particularly profitable for most makers, but they offer designers a creative outlet and find a ready customer base in a country that has always had a taste for whimsy, said Hiroaki Omatsu, who writes a weekly column about the toys for a website run by the Asahi Shimbun, a Japanese newspaper.
“Creating gachapon for adults is all about devoting yourself to making something that’s worthless,” he said. “‘This is ridiculous’ is the highest form of praise.”
Selling gachapon is not too different from buying them. Predicting what people will like is nearly impossible. And that gives designers license to make any toy that strikes their fancy.
Novelty is a key competition metric for the industry. The pleasure of gachapon comes not so much from the toys themselves, but the fun of buying them.