Short Stuff

According to its Wikipedia article, a gashapon translates as a "trading toy". It's also commonly known as capsule toy due to the nature that they come in capsule dispensed from vending machines. Capsule toys have been around for as long as I've known and even when I was a kid, the neighbourhood sundry store used to have vending machines at the store front to entice kids to spent 20 to 50 cents a capsule.

Japanese capsule toys differ in a sense that the capsule toys are of higher quality and the price per capsule is certainly more expensive, ranging from RM 4 to RM 8 and more often than not, the contents are collectible items in a series. The vending machines can be found not in sundry shops, but in shopping centres, Japanese supermarket chains such as Jusco or toy stores such as Toys 'r' Us.

This little fella came along with my Electroplankton package and basically this is an example of how a gashapon looks like outside its capsule.

The reason for it being added to my package was that I needed to bring my order price to slightly above USD 50 (Electroplankton by itself was USD 48.90) in order to qualify for a USD 5 discount. This little fella cost USD 1.99.

This gashapon is part of a series featuring characters from the game Animal Crossing. All together they are 7 of them to collect.