The Ketan Club headquarters looks more like a toy store than a corporate headquarters. Visitors are greeted at the main entrance by life-size figures of Schubelle and a gorilla, as well as large and small toys in all rooms.
This makes sense given the company's focus as a producer of accessories for "toyball" machines in Japan. These machines come out with plastic balls containing small prizes that are obtained for some coins after spinning a dedicated handle. They are called a variety of names, all onomatopoeia of the sounds made when used. These names are "gacha", "gacha gacha" or "gacha". Gashabon.”
On the wooden shelves near the entrance to the Ketan Club, versions of the game balls produced by the company throughout its 15-year history are displayed, and the huge variety of shapes and figures captures the eye. Among those exhibits you'll come across the company's most successful product: the "Futchiko Cup" series. The product includes figures of a woman named Fuchiko (the name is a play on the weight of the Japanese word “fuchi” which means the rim of a cup) in all poses, and the figures are designed to balance on the rim of a cup or mug. The fun designs and amazing variety are just right to whet the appetite of collectors like these figures. After its launch in 2012, the figures quickly became a hit on social media, particularly among young women, but their popularity has expanded across generations. And with the release of the Sports Figure series in July 2021, sales have now exceeded 20 million figures.
Ketan Club also produces all kinds of cat figurines. Above is a series of “cats in paper boxes” on the left, and on the right are magnets of cats with tongues hanging out and decorated with fungi.
(Left) The first-generation “Futchiko Cup,” a figure of Fuchiko playing soccer from the Sports Series. (Photo courtesy of Tanaka Katsuki/Kitan Club).
“We developed Fuchiko with manga artist Tanaka Katsuki. We work with artists like Katsuki or sculptor Hashimoto Mio, but some of our ideas come from our monthly planning meetings. We have about 20 employees now, and most of them attend meetings where everyone sketches their own ideas. If a drawing is not interesting at first glance, we discard it immediately, but if it immediately arouses everyone’s interest, it is chosen.”
”One of our strengths as a small business is that we can move something from the idea stage to the final product quickly. While it takes a long time for big companies to implement the idea through planning.”
Sculptures from the Zoo and Aquarium series by sculptor Hashimoto Mio (courtesy of Hashimoto Mio, from the Keitan Club website).
The company releases between four and eight new items per month. Their most recent hit was onigiringo (a play on the words “onigiri” meaning rice ball and “go” meaning filling, the “ringo” part being the Japanese pronunciation of the English word “ring.” The idea for onigirigo was the brainchild of one of the staff. A model from the collection in 2019 but has since become a series with the launch of the fourth edition in summer 2021. These toys consist of a rice ball-shaped box containing a ring whose “lobe” is shaped like traditional rice ball fillings such as umeboshi (pickled plum) or chips Salmon or salmon eggs.”Younger people post pictures on Instagram and show them to their friends, like the “fuchiko cup” figurines. Even after the fuchiko mania, I didn't think we'd have so many people buying large quantities of onigiringo.
People's interest in “toyballs” can be fickle. According to Furuya, “cats, frogs and fungus” are some of the key ingredients to a successful product, but it can be hard to predict what people will really be obsessed with. Social media buzz seems to be the secret to success.
The original paper of the idea submitted by the employee. The idea was eventually released as “Squid Guts Pendant” and Onigiringo.
Left: President Furuya holding an onigiringo figure. Right: Hangers for phones in shapes ranging from seated employees to whimsical frogs.
Furuya quit his job at toy ball manufacturer Yujin (now Takara Tomy Arts) and went solo in 2006 when he was 30 years old. He was from the generation who grew up obsessed with “kinnikuman” erasers, small rubber figures based on famous professional wrestlers from the popular animated series, sold at gacha machines in front of candy stores. But for his company, he decided to focus on a new, more adult-centric market.
”I knew that as Japan's birth rate declined, there would be increasingly fewer children, so I narrowed my focus to adults from the start. At the beginning of the business, we were incurring losses because we put quality above everything, but then the Fuchiko chain became a resounding success and the company took off. But in the past five years we have seen rapid growth in a new competition.”
Ono Katsuhiko, President of the Japan Gacha-Gacha Association, also worked for the Ugen Corporation prior to joining Furuya. He is currently working as a consultant and organizer of gacha events. According to Ono, the toy ball market is worth about 40 billion yen annually and has grown by about 50 percent in the past 10 years. The two main players, Bandai and Takara Tomy Arts, have about 60% of the market, but new companies have been gaining traction in recent years, and there are now about 30 smaller companies targeting mainly adults. About 300 new products are put on the market every month, sold by about 600,000 vending machines nationwide. The price of a single product is often between 300 to 500 yen, and these reasonable prices help increase its popularity.
These games actually have their origins in the United States, says Uno, an expert in the history of gaming balls.
“The US had gumball machines, and then they started putting toys in them. Around World War II, L. O. Hardman, head of the American trading company Penny King, came to Japan to buy celluloid toys to put in those vending machines. The first gaming ball machines appeared in Japan in 1965. In the same year, Hardman helped build the Japanese Penny Shokai Company, which began developing machines imported from the United States. The children were soon captivated by the machines placed in front of the candy stores. They were so popular, the illustrated magazine Asahi Graph published a special issue about these machines in 1966.”
Left: Japanese-made celluloid toys imported into the United States in the early postwar period. Right: Benny Shokai (Uno Katsuhiko Collection).
“For the children, these machines were their first experience of 'gambling' with their own money. They would take 10 or 20 yen from their wallets, put them into the gacha machine, and then turn the knob. But there was absolutely no guarantee that the ball containing the toy the child wanted would come out. It's a serious game, a game of hope and disappointment. I'm 56 now and I grew up twirling those knobs in front of the candy store. Now with the increase in product quality, the gap between winning and losing has narrowed. But I still love the uncertainty and frustration of not knowing which balls will come out.”
Bandai entered the toy ball market in 1977. The company launched products based on its own characters priced at 100 yen, while most other products were priced around 20 yen. The Kinnikuman erasers released by Bandai in 1983 continue to sell, bringing the number of erasers sold to over 180 million. The Gundam series has also become a huge source of success. Ono calls this period the first wave of gacha popularity, and Eugene first appeared on the scene during that era in 1988.
Children gathered in front of a candy store. Most machines charged 10 yen at the time (photo originally published in Asahi Graph magazine in 1966, from the Ono archives).
The second wave came in 1995 and was sparked by the release of Windows 95 and the new trend towards open blogs. People started writing about the awesomeness of collecting gacha games on their blogs, and soon after Bandai's new full-color HG Ultraman series, which retails for 200 yen, is a huge hit. Until then all gacha games were monochrome. Then figurines of Disney characters began to appear, and the market began to go beyond the scope of children's interest to spread to their parents as well.
The third wave was in 2012 with the “Futchiko Cup”. The spread of smartphones has helped push forward this trend. Ono points out that “iPhones entered Japan in 2008. In 2012, when Fuchiko was released, the number of smartphones finally overtook traditional phones in Japan. Products that have a lot of detail in their designs and are made in collaboration with artists, such as Fuchiko’s sculptures, are ideal for social media especially among women, and this has helped increase their popularity.”
Now we are in the midst of the fourth wave. “It is characterized by the presence of specialized stores that specifically target women. Since 2019 stores like Gacha Gacha no Mori have spread all over the country, and about 60 percent of their customers are women.”
Gacha games that simulate everyday objects are becoming increasingly popular. And there's a wide range of unimpressive goods, from home furnishings to ice shavers that can actually shred ice or water coolers that actually spit out water, and even mannequins for toilet slippers that were invented for a reason.
Products that make noises have become popular lately. With the proliferation of bathroom remotes that tell you your bathroom is ready when you press a button, buttons to ask the driver to stop the bus, doorbells and “nurse call” buttons, these toys seem to satisfy a hidden urge to press buttons repeatedly.
The rapid increase in adult-oriented products has also led to an increase in the number of young creators who specialize in planning and designing gacha games. “With the increase in the number of manufacturers, the barriers to commercialization have decreased, and there is an opportunity for these young artists to gain more exposure,” Ono says. Gacha offers an opportunity for self-expression. For example, the design firm Zarigani Works has a creative pair hit with "The Miserable Apologetic Employee," a cellphone pendant sold by Ketan Club, and it has a new level of presentation. They also recently launched the “Ishi (Stone)” series through Bushiroad Creative.
An amazing variety of miniatures from the Uno Collection.
According to Uno, in 2020 the COVID-19 pandemic caused a temporary decline in sales in stores specializing in game balls, but it soon rebounded again. In August 2020, Bandai Namco opened its flagship department store, Gashabun, in Ikebukuro. The store houses around 3,000 gacha machines and is now listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the store with the largest selection of ball arcade machines. In October of that year, the movie version of “Demon Slayer” was released in cinemas and was a huge success, which contributed to a huge increase in sales of toy balls.
Ketan Club President Furuya believes that the number of brick-and-mortar stores will start to decline in the near future, and online gacha games targeting young “digital natives” will become a new cornerstone of the market . “The content will go digital, I think, like music, videos or artwork. I think our company needs to take the lead in opening up a new digital market for gacha.”
Furuya relates the idea to the recent news of a “gacha trip.” Low-cost airline Peach Aviation has set up an automatic vending machine for travel itineraries. The ball (sold for 5,000 yen) that comes out of the machine contains a travel destination and a "mission" to be completed at the intended destination. The system gives 6,000 points that can be used to purchase a round-trip ticket to the listed destination.
“Some young people today feel that they love to travel, but they don't know where to go, and they want someone to decide for them. And some people these days can't even choose the music they want to listen to. I think you can make a business with gacha helping people find new tunes. I want to give people that sense of discovery, like, 'Wait, what? What is this?!’ Whether real or digital, that is the essence of gacha.”
(Originally published in Japanese by Kimi Itakura of Nippon.com. English translation. Banner photo: Keitan Club President Furuya Daiki. Photo credit: Nippon.com unless otherwise noted)
