The gacha fever has hit Singapore! When I first started collecting gashapons a year back, our local market has a limited number of gacha vending machines located in major toy stores like Action City, Simply Toy and Toys "R" Us with a tiny variety of outdated Yujin series. The people who really interested in playing the machines are parents with kids who bugged them, young couples who treat the gashapons as a gift to commemorate their transient time together etc.; people who are not serious in collecting the complete set. Serious collectors like myself would tend to purchase a complete set for a slightly escalated price from the usual suspects from Clarke Quay. 

        In late 2003, there seemed to be a change of this particular pattern as Sheng Tai toys tied up a deal to bring in Bandai gashapons in addition with the Yujin ones they are already bring in. This is a joy to collectors to such popular series like SD Gundam, MS Gundam, HG Ultraman, HG Godzilla etc. Several retailers including Toyz Frenz, Doll's Inc. etc. started to bring in more gacha machines and received positive market response as collectors can now truly enjoy the meaning of gacha culture in which they can randomly "tikam" for their favorite toys for a more reasonable price and had an opportunity to mingle with fellow collectors to trade for extra pieces with the wanted ones. Katoots had an increasing importance as a forum for such friendly trades between collectors. One of the committee member, Leon mentioned to me that there's this particular Yujin series called "Nightmare Before X'mas Perfect Edition" was a very good example in which several members benefited in collecting a complete set via exchanging extra pieces with each other. It seemed a small gacha community starting to grow in our sunny island.

        We first get to know about Toy Room early this year as a newly established toy shop which specialised in selling children's educative toys is  located in #03-26H Suntec City Mall (just along the stretch off Courts) & been supplying quite a number of gacha vending machines in the premises of the shopping mall. The number and variety of the gashapons available is quite comparable to that of Toys R Us. Then light a rolling thunder, in came an earth-shaking announcement in May that Toy Room would collaborate with Sheng Tai toys to organise a mini gacha convention in the Family Link area outside of the shop. This definite drew a lot of excitement and anticipation among local collectors including dead beat one like myself who still quite adverse to "tikam" as I still prefer to pay more for a complete set and not been gutted for keep getting extra of the similar piece. 

        News began to pour in about the date, settings and features. The event would be held for a nice period of 2 and a half weeks, starting from 11th June 2004 to 28th June 2004. As promised by the retailers, there would be over 100 gacha machines with a wide variety of popular recent Yujin and Bandai gashapons releases. While collectors start to accumulate as much $1 coin over the time before the event started, we are been informed that Toy Room is so considerate that they are able to supply collectors with cash to coin exchange without additional cost. Ii no sabisu ne! Some additional features include the presence of a 400% capsule which are spotted in recent Yujin Gacha fair in Japan recently, meant to be part of the lucky draw prize with smaller capsules. The winner would spot a slip to inform their winning capsule among the thousands of sealed capsules.

        Now we shall see what kind of variety people are looking forward to be able to find in the gacha fair. Basically you can categorize the range of gashapons into the different price of Bandai and Yujin gashapons:

 

 

Japanese Price

Singapore Price

Comparison

Yujin 100¥

 S$1.60 S$1 Cheaper

Yujin 200¥

 S$3.20 S$2 Definitely Cheaper

Bandai 100¥

 S$1.60 S$2 More expensive

Bandai 200¥

 S$3.20 S$3 Cheaper

Bandai 300¥

 S$4.80 S$4 Cheaper

So as you can see aside of the 100¥ Bandai gashapons, it is very worthwhile to "tikam" for gashapons in Singapore, especially the 200V Yujin gashapons in which we are cheaper by $1.20 locally. Therefore we come upon a hugely anticipated series that collectors are aiming to get, including myself. It's the "SR Binchotan" set of sweet looking anime girls which was due to release in late May 2004. There are 6 pieces from the normal series and 2 rare variants. Another highly anticipated series has to be the "Pokemon Gacha machine Part 2".

        Entering the last few days before the event, the Toy Room crew started to bring in the machines and set them up at the open space in Family Link. Anxious collectors started to gather to take a look at the arrangement of the machines as well as the series been offered, Finally with a huge thanks to Leon's wife, Rene who took the effort to first inform us the series available and our prayers are answered as "SR Binchotan" is been offered and in abundance. Some changes occur when Toy Room opened up the fair prematurely as people were allowed to tikam as early as the evening of the 9th, and as expected my wanted Binchotan and gang is a hot favorite.

actual day

© Copyright KK Heng 2004