in katakana - more accurately, gachapon), also referred to as "Candy toy" or "trading toy", is a Japanese onomatopoeia, made up of two sounds: "gacha" for the turning of a crank on a toy vending machine, and "pon" for the sound of the toy capsule dropping into the receptacle. It is collectively used to describe both the machines themselves, and any toy obtained from them. Though "gashapon" is the more common spelling as seen in the United States, it is primarily a corruption of gachapon, which is more technically accurate. "Gachapon" is a far more prevalent spelling/pronunciation in Japan than "gashapon," which is rarely, if ever, seen.
Gashapon machines are similar to the coin-op toy vending machines, seen outside of grocery stores and other retailers in the United States. While coin-op vending toys are usually cheap, low-quality products, sold for a quarter or 50 cents, Japanese Gashapon can cost anywhere from 100 - 500 yen (Equal to $1–$5 US) and are normally a much higher quality product.
They are often constructed from high-grade PVC plastic, and contain more molding detail and carefully painted features. However, these are not simply toys: they are collector's items, with rare ones fetching extremely high prices.
Gashapon toys are often based on popular character licenses from Japanese manga, video games, anime and popular icons. These highly detailed toys based on popular culture icons have found a large following among adults in Japan, and the trend is filtering to the West with other popular culture influences such as anime and manga. It is not at all uncommon to see sets based on licenses explicitly for adults, with figures of naked or near-naked women. [edit]
Collecting them All
Virtually all gashapon are released in sets - each series will have a number of figures to collect. They are, by nature, a "blind purchase"; a person inserts money and hopes to get the toy or figure they desire which becomes frustrating as one risks obtaining the same capsule over and over again.
Most collectors will buy sets from gashapon stores in places such as Osaka's Nihonbashi (den den town), or Tokyo's Akihabara. Depending on the store, the sets are usually cheaper than buying them randomly out of a machine.
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