Where else but Japan could you buy a miniature version of Edvard Munch¡¯s ¡°The Scream¡± figure crouching over a squat toilet, horror-struck? It¡¯s one of thousands of ingeniously designed trinkets you can buy for a pittance from toy machines across the nation. They¡¯re subversive, beautifully crafted and often hilarious. They are gachapon.
¡°Gachapon¡± refers both to vending machines and the capsule toys they spit out. When you crack open one of these plastic eggs, you¡¯ll never know what you¡¯ll get even though it¡¯s part of a defined set of toys. That¡¯s only a fraction of the fun of gachapon, a roughly ?30 billion industry with 150 new toys hatched every month. While capsule toys originated overseas, gachapon are uniquely Japanese.
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