Gashapon Rakuen: Introduction

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Now I shall touch on the wide range of toys available for us to "tikam". The main type and the most celebrated one would be of course the figurines. Figurines are divided into several subcategories: characters-based, auto-mobile-based, nature-based, supernatural & mythology-based, miniature food-based and everyday accessories-based. Most of the figurines come in pretty small size (around 1.5 to 6 inches tall), coloured (of course there's the various colour variants which we will talk about later) and non-articulated (some are articulated even for toys of such small size). The material is mainly soft PVC or brittle plastic, although die-cast had been used at times. What really fascinated fans is that the sculptors can actually produced such highly detailed works with such a size constraint, some impressive series actually looked like statues shrunk down. These days a new trend in figurines gashapons is the inclusion of a diorama (which is a personal favourite of mine). Now I shall touch on the wide range of toys available for us to "tikam". The main type and the most celebrated one would be of course the figurines. Figurines are divided into several subcategories: characters-based, auto-mobile-based, nature-based, supernatural & mythology-based, miniature food-based and everyday accessories-based. Most of the figurines come in pretty small size (around 1.5 to 6 inches tall), coloured (of course there's the various colour variants which we will talk about later) and non-articulated (some are articulated even for toys of such small size). The material is mainly soft PVC or brittle plastic, although die-cast had been used at times. What really fascinated fans is that the sculptors can actually produced such highly detailed works with such a size constraint, some impressive series actually looked like statues shrunk down. These days a new trend in figurines gashapons is the inclusion of a diorama (which is a personal favourite of mine).

Character-based figurines derived from popular characters from all sorts of genre including anime (Japanese TV animation series), movies, manga (Japanese comic), console games, TV series, mascots of certain commercial products, and even famous personality such as historians and pop stars.

Popular children anime such as Pokemon, Digimon, Doraemon and Crayon Shinchan etc have all been immortalized into successful gashapons series. Other popular manga series of recent years such as One Piece, Rurouni Kenshin, Love Hina, Chobits, Naruto, Rave, Shaman King have also been made into outstanding figures that true blue fans got to have them. Dragonball (see left) by Akira Toriyama due to its newfound cult following in the States, perhaps has the most accomplished lineage of gashapons with several new series churning month in month out. Not all the new series are hogging in the limelight, Japanese are always respectful to their seniors and hold deep sentimental values for their past glories, thus classic anime and mange series such as Cyborg 009, Astroboy, Tetsujin 28, Devilman, Gatchaman, Ultraman, Godzilla, Kamen Rider etc have all been unleashed a new breath of life in recent years with new gashapon figurines that both the young and old cherished a lot.

Gundam is a particular anime genre that spawned a lot of gashapons, shokugans, trading figures and even sharpeners & chess pieces by Bandai and it's subsidiary brands, one of the most popular series is the recently-ended Gundam Seed series.


Gundam MS series gashapons from Bandai	Gundam Ultimate Operation trading figures	Gundam Seed sharpeners collection by Seika

We all know the Japanese have an infatuation with the Western cultures, and movies perhaps is one of the biggest western culture that the Japanese followed feverishly. There had been trading figures for blockbusters like "Terminator", "Alien" (see right), and "Lord of the Rings".

The Japanese simply love anything Disney as all popular Disney characters new and old alike, have been made into figurines.

TV console games hold as much importance to otakus (hardcore fans) as manga and anime. Companies of course take that into consideration and made a major scoop with some of the most wildly popular games' characters been made into trading figurines. The most popular that came in mind is definitely Square-enix's "Final Fantasy" series. The Coca-cola exclusive FF characters series and the Final Fantasy Creatures series are 2 of the most sought out trading figures series in the market. Other popular console games such as Street Fighters, Tales of Symphonia, .Hack, Super Mario Brothers, Chaos Legion (see left), Devil May Cry and Disgaia have also been made into figurines.

Talking about mascots, none is more popular than Hello Kitty and her Sanrio buddies; however there's a limitation of Sanrio-based trading figurines, perhaps due to property rights problem. Tare Panda, Kogepan and other San X mascots have been made into a set of trading figures but not hugely popular. Fujiya's Peko chan enjoyed a pretty successful reign in the candy toys line which now has developed into its 4th series.

There had been a few series of historical figurines (see bottom) been produced by Furuta and F Toys based on samurais and warlords of the ancient Japan. There's also a series produced about the famous personalities from the political (e.g. Churchill and Hitler), music (Beethoven and Mozart) and art (Mona Lisa and van Gogh) scene. There will also be upcoming series commemorating people like Bruce Lee and Akira Kurozawa.


"Historical Museum" part 1 by F Toys	"Historical Romance" part 3 by Furuta

As for pop idols, there's a bottle-cap collections for the Japanese girl group of the 80s, "Pink Lady" and a series on Mini moni (spawned from the popular Morning Musume). Sports superstars had also been produced as mini collectible figurines, which includes famous J-League players and baseball players.