During my travels in Tokyo I purchased a lot, and I mean a lot of Gashapons. The terms gashapon refer to a variety of vending machine-dispensed capsule toys popular in Japan and elsewhere. It’s popularity has soared and has gone world wide. There are many different Gashapon’s to be had, one of which includes the blind box, refer to blind-box trading figures, which are essentially the same product sold randomly out of sealed packages instead of a machine.
If you’re heading to Tokyo…
Unlike Tokyo, the Gashapon standard in the UK is, well, a tad bit poor. In Tokyo the figurine standard was second to none and you would find rows and rows of shops filled with Gashapon, which were changed weekly depending on what’s popular at the time. They had a load of Dragon Ball Z Gashapon as well as my favourite anime Gintama, having it’s own Gashapon set. The best place in Tokyo to find Gachapon shops is Akihabara. Akihabara is definitely the best place to go if you want to do a Gashapon haul.
So for today I have 3 Gashapons to open. I have no idea what’s in them as I cannot remember what I bought. I cannot wait to find out!!
The first Gashapon comes from the Gintama dessert series of Gashapons and literally remember seeing it everywhere and I know for a fact I have a ton of these left to open. I’m not joking I bought too many of these ones that I’m 90% sure I have a double here and there!! In my first opening I got Takasugi Shinsuke, Gintama’s resident bad boy. I have no idea what’s he’s sitting on, I’m going to take a guess and say a pie of some sort. The quality is absolutely amazing though!! Expected from Japan!! He’s soo cute too!
The second Gashapon also comes from the same Gintama Dessert Gashapon series but this time I’ve got Kondo Isao, quite possibly one of my favourite characters from the whole anime. His face is adorable and look at him ride that chocolate covered banana, topped with sprinkles and everything!!
Ahhh now we have something different!! Here we have a cute little cat squashed between two wafer slices and covered in chocolate sauce!! This is part of the Neko Cafe Gashapon series. This is series 6 and it came out in 2015. There are 6 pieces to collect all together and with a little research I found out that this is an Eclair Cat!!! How adorable!! So those are not wafers, like I stated, and now I’m feeling embarrassed!!
I hope you enjoyed my Gashapon Openings!! There will be a lot more coming soon!!