Gacha Machine Attack!!! New Star Wars and Disney machines!

Wifey is sick so I had the chance to bring the kids shopping.  Since it was just the three of us, I brought them to places we tend to avoid as a family, the game center, the toy section of the department store and to get ice cream from the ice cream vending machines. 

Naturally, we ended up in the gacha gacha machine section of the store.  Being in Japan, one can't escape gacha gacha machines, which are the Japanese versions of those 25-cent toy machines in front of U.S. supermarkets.  Unlike their U.S. counterparts, these machines are 200 and 300 yen (just under two and three bucks).  The toys in the gacha machines are much much better than U.S. toys in the quarter machines and they are big business.  All of the major toy brands can be found in the machines, Disney, Marvel, Pokemon, Godzilla, Hello Kitty, etc.  As an aside, I remember getting a neon orange digital watch (or maybe my sister got it) from a quarter machine when I was like 11 years old.  That really was like hitting the jackpot since the rest of the toys in the machine were like rubber insects, metal puzzle tricks and goofy teeth.  We were astonished that the watch on the cardboard sign in the machine was actually in the machine.  That just shows how crappy the prizes in the U.S. quarter machines are.  The machine was in front of Child World by the way.  Now that's a blast from the past along with Venture, Zayre and Monkey Wards.  Sadly, Kaybee Toys, Borders, Circuit City are also now amongst the retailers not with us anymore.  Enough with the nostalgic crap, back to the machines.

I have a suspicion that the lower level of government interference here allows these machines to be everywhere as small chokable toys are heavily regulated in the U.S.   

Here's the aisle:

There are four rows of machines here.

Mandatory Disney machine.  I think there were 10 different Disney prizes. 

Star Wars mini-helmets. Cool shit.

              Line products.  I highly recommend the Line app.  It kicks iMessage's ass.  Totally faster and easier to send pictures.

The contents of the machines change like every two weeks or so.  The girls chose pretty normal stuff, Disney, and purikua, a Japanese princess show like Sailormoon.  Look below to see what it is.

Of course, she got the bird rather than the princesses.  That'll cause us repeated trips to the machine.

The stuff above is pretty standard fare.  Below is the stuff that Japan is famous for.

Mini-samurai helmets.

Pop dancers.

Just what everyone's iPhone needs- a futon!

Zombie fruit.

We have full-sized swimwear models.  Why not full-sized green army men?

Mini-table games.

No words to describe this.

My personal favorite- deep-fried construction vehicles. Let me say that again.  Deep-fried construction vehicles. WTF?! Seriously.  I can imagine the R&D department of this company telling management that there is a true need for deep-fried construction vehicles.  Gotta love Japan.

The kids were happy with their prizes, so 400 yen did not go to waste.  The truth is, these days you can't get much happiness for under 5 bucks.  My oldest one got a Little Mermaid mirror and the younger one got the bird figure (I think she was just pretending to be happy as I suspect she wanted a princess figure).   There actually is a district in Tokyo that is famous for these gacha machines.  I'll talk about it later.