Also, capsule toys are a waste of money. I love them.

Also #14

Greetings from the start of the spring semester where I’m writing lesson plans and avoiding my inbox as a matter of course. Of course, I’m doing this avoidance therapy from the comfort of my desk at home where I have the entirety of the internet as well as several other distractions available to me. In fact, two of my favorite distractions are right here on the desk: the knuckle bears.

There is, of course, no better collectible in all the world than the Japanese gachapon. Gachapon is a portmanteau of a pair of onomatopoeic words. From Jisho.org:

Both gashapon and gachapon are Japanese onomatopoeia, made up of two sounds: "gasha" or "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.

So, yeah, capsule toys. Man, I love 'em. And, of course, being me, I'm conflicted about it.

This is one of my absolute favorite gachapon toys. I can’t remember what it’s from or who made it, but I can tell you it’s had pride of place on my shelves amongst my books for over twenty years now.

On the one hand, these toys are overpriced pieces of plastic. They tend to run around ¥400 as of the time of writing, which is an increase from the average of about ¥200 when I first came to Japan. So, yeah, they're not cheap. And finding all the ones you need to complete a set is something of a nightmare by design.

A given series is produced, distributed to toy stores, department stores, shopping malls, truckstops, convenience stores, bookstores, and anywhere else they can stick one of the capsule machines. Clever packaging lets you know just how many figures are in each series and what number series this is. Not to mention whether there are any secret figures in that particular series.

Perhaps an example is needed. One of my current minor obsessions is this series of animals camping. They run about ¥400 apiece and there are six figures in the series. Or 18 if you count the identical animal figures with three different sets of chairs. What's more, this is the sixth series in the run, the only difference being that some of the camping accessories are in different colors. In other words, this is designed to appeal to all the worse traits of modern consumer capitalists and we are helpless in their web.

But, on the other hand, these damn things are works of art. Seriously. Let me digress for a moment to talk about designer vinyl.

In the late 90s / early 2000s, a small cross-section of artists, graphic designers, and commercial printmakers started working together to create mass-produced "toys" made of vinyl and plastic and marketed as art pieces. They were brilliant and birthed a whole new industry for artists and designers alike.

From an artistic standpoint, the designers were able to play sculpture and replication by using new techniques borrowed from commercial processes like toy manufacturing. This allowed them to create a kind of commercial art, where normal, run of the mill collectors could afford to buy the occasional piece, unlike gallery works with prices in the thousands of dollars.

Designer vinyl, is, at the moment, a legitimate and ongoing form of commercial art, right up there with graphic design and photography. As such, it's prices have gone up considerably. A single toy by a big name artist might run in the hundreds, possibly thousands of dollars, especially for a one-off or limited edition.

Which brings me back to capsule toys. Buried in amongst the pokemon, Mario, and Star Wars toys, are incredible runs of art toys at miniature scale. Some of these art toys are designed for the capsule market. They're produced by studios in Tokyo, and are often based around unique aspects of different cultures (meh) or puns (yeah!) As an example of the latter, that I am currently collecting, allow me to present Hato. Hato is a homynym in Japanese, meaning both pigeon and, uhm, hat. Hence: pigeons in hats. I fucking love these things.

But the real apotheosis of the vinyl art toy in a capsule moment for me was when I first discovered the Knuckle Bears.

Knuckle Bears. Smiley is the rare one.

The Knuckle Bears are a limited series designed by Touma, a Japanese artist, and produced in 2003 and 2004. And they helped me at a time when I really, desperately needed it.

I have always been prone to anxiety. And in the early 2000s, for whatever reason, it became the worst it has ever been. And, of course, I treated it the best way possible: I ate too much and drank too much and wandered home at three in the morning out of money and hating myself. Good times.

When I realized how badly I was spiraling - which honestly took some time; it's hard to see the hurricane from the eye sometimes - I started looking for ways to fix it. And there, in one of the shops I liked, full of pop culture ephemera, I found a capsule machine selling the knuckle bears. They became my over-riding obsession for six months. Whenever I felt the anxiety start to crowd in, when my thoughts turned dark and dangerously repetitive, I went searching for another knuckle bear machine.

Not to put too fine a point on it, this meant that I had to get up out of bed. Put on clothes. Get my bike. Move about in the fresh air and sunshine. And then when I got home, I had a distraction. I spent hours translating each and every kanji on the sell sheet, until I understood all the key information that would help me find more. Eventually, I had the whole set, including the rare mystery figure. What could I do? I got out my camera, I started learning all I could about building a micro-studio and doing toy photography. And by the time I was done? I had my anxiety under control. For a while anyway.

I didn't realize it then, but in retrospect, I had spent most of my later high school years and early college years doing the same thing but with trading cards. It was only years later that I learned about displacement and distraction therapy.

But I guess one reason I bring this up is to remind myself why sometimes collecting is much more than just displays or having something cool. All too often, I don't let myself buy anything. They're too expensive or a waste of space, or I should really be saving that money anyway. I mean, I'm a good American boy, if I'm enjoying something there must be something wrong with it. Or with me. So, this reminder is two-fold - one, it's okay to enjoy things, even if they might be a waste of money. And two, when that urge to collect a new shiny thing comes over you, is it really about the shiny? Probably not.