Gun Collection Gashapon featuring AK-47

Gashapon, or capsule toys come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. The most common ones that you can find, are figurines of video game or anime characters or genre related merchandize. But the Japanese, being Japanese, just won't stop at that.

Where else in the world can you find 6 to 10 centimeter scale models of guns? The Gun Collection 5 Gashapon by Good Smile consists of 4 guns, the Avtomat Kalashnikova 1947, the Howa Heavy Industry Type 89 Assault Rifle, the Heckler & Koch Mark 23 Mod 0 and the Ingram Mac-11.

This collection also comes with a "secret"/"chase" gun which comes equipped with a laser pointer.


Interested? Click here to purchase at Play-Asia.com.

Some Assembly Required - Animal Crossing Gashapon

My order for the Animal Crossing Houses, Figures and Accessories collection arrived today and it really is a mixed bag (both literally and figuratively). Having been no stranger to purchasing gashapon collections from PA, I was suprised that this time my order came with 2 duplicate sets.

However, it wasn't really a big deal since I already have the figurines from the missing set (I got them in a previous collection) and I only missed out on some furniture items. In addition to that, one of the figurines broke clean off its base and I'm guessing it was either due to the tightly packed packaging or the long transit. A dab of super glue should fix the problem.

Taken as a complete set, this collection consists of 4 sets of figurines with their respective houses and furniture and another 2 sets consisting of a pair of figurines each and their respective furniture (no houses). Fortunately for me, the missing set was one of the sets sans house.

As usual, the figurines are made out of plastic and are as detailed as the previous collection. Since this is my first collection which has houses and furniture, I'm pleased with the quality of said items.

The houses consist of plastic parts and wooden parts (might be very hard cardboad) that require some assembly but the main thing is that they come pre-painted. Included with each house are printed cardboard pieces that function as wallpaper and carpets for the interior of the houses. You might notice some of the designs as they are featured in the Animal Crossing game as well.

Aside from the roof colour and internal wallpaper, all houses share the same features with white picket fences and cute postboxes outside. It's a shame thought that they don't feature double storey houses :P.

Like the figurines, the furniture items are made out of plastic and carry the quirky/cute look that you see in the game. Some of the more interesting furniture items include the pineapple bed, LCD TV, watermelon chair and the chair from the snowman furniture set.

Problems related to the order aside, this is a set worth buying (and taking a risk for); the addition of furniture and houses alone pretty much makes this a shoo-in for any Animal Crossing fan.

Now I leave the pictures to do the talking:

Got to Get 'Em All?

Gashapon (Capsule Toys)...once you buy one, you'll want to continue to collect them all. Previously I made the mistake of purchasing a single gashapon from the Animal Crossing collection only to find out that the collection sold out a couple of days later, preventing me from completing my collection.

So, when word got out last Sunday that gashapons from a new Animal Crossing collection were available for sale, I made an order for all 8 figures. Play-Asia's free shipping option is pretty fast as I received the package this morning.

These figures come in the same size and in the same stackable display cases as those from the previous collection (review available here). The difference is that the figures from this new collection are a tie-in to the new Animal Crossing movie released in Japan.

Out of the 8 figures, I can only identify several familiar faces, such as Tom Nook, Redd, Blathers and the cab driver. The quality of the gashapon is high and the figurines themselves are well painted, capturing the look and feel from their video game (or perhaps, movie) counterparts. My only gripe is that some of the figurines don't stay stuck to their display case bases. I use a tiny amount of water soluble glue to resolve this problem.

That minor issue aside, these figurines do look cool stacked together. There are nine in the picture as I included my previous gashapon with the rest of the set:

Get your own set of Animal Crossing Gashapons from Play-Asia (here)

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.