Just recently I went nuts and purchased a full size Japanese style gashapon/gacha machine (actually two). Now this might not be “role playing” related, which you’d expect on this page for a tiny role playing game publisher, but it’s really worth sharing because it was a process. Plus, it relates to what I bring to conventions, so there we have it.
How it Started
Anyway, earlier this year (2025) I visited Japan for the first time. And while I was familar with gashapon/gacha, I wasn’t in love with them. They were cool, yes, but nothing life changing. For those that don’t know, gacha are small toys that come in plastic “capsules” that come out of vending machines (gacha machines).
I figured that we had that sort of thing in the U.S., so it wasn’t that big of a deal. After all, what gen Xer or millennial hasn’t gotten a rubber ball or some goofy rubber thing that you throw on a wall and it “crawls down it” from a plastic container from a vending machine?
After experiencing gacha in Japan, I quickly realized they are not the same at all. They’re not even in the same league.
The things that set Japanese gacha capsule toys apart are:
1. They’re much higher quality and way more interesting. I’m not going to get too much into it here, but they have cool miniature versions of things, cool toys from famous IPs, weird toys… it’s a fascinating assortment of toys and collectibles.
2: They’re very affordable. They cost from about 100 to 500 yen, which is roughly .70 cents to $3.50 U.S. You can get some seriously cool toys/souvenirs/collectibles for very little money, especially around the $3.50 range.
3. You can get them everywhere. There are so many spots that have gacha machines. There’s whole stores that are primarily machines and they are placed almost randomly in front of stores. You can even get some on your way through the airport. Their omni-presence demands that you notice them.
4. They feed the gambling impulse. Okay maybe this one isn’t so good, but because each machine has a series of figures or items that are randomly dispensed, there may be a strong desire to get all of your favorite toy rather than getting one rubber ball and being done with it.
As I went around Japan collecting gacha and having a good time, my brain got infected with gacha fever. After I got home, I faced with serious gacha withdrawals.
Then something troubling set in. Not only did I miss the machines and buying things from them, but I wanted one for myself. It seemed crazy, what would I do with one if I had one? The answer (justification) was fairly simple: I could bring one to conventions. It likely wouldn’t make a lot of money, but it could possibly be attention grabbing to draw people to my booth. And thus began my research phase.
Example of a Bandai gacha machine.
Example of a Takara Tomy Arts gacha machine.
Gacha Machine basics
I’m no expert on gacha. I know more than the regular person, for sure. The following is what I came up with from learning about them in order to purchase one.
Gacha machines are fairly simple. You put coins or tokens into it, turn a crank, and a capsule pops out. They’re really not all that different from a lot of the ones you can find in the U.S., except for the size of the capsules and the design of the machine itself.
As far as what the most common machines are, I remember seeing two the most often. First there were the gashapon machines by Bandai that had a bit more of a “squarish” appearance, followed by others that that had a more rounded look. I only learned later that the squarish ones are the newer Bandai machines and more round ones are either older Bandai machines or from other manufacturers like Takara Tomy.
I also learned that Bandai has a trademark on “gashapon”, which helps explain the use of the word “gacha” to describe these things.
Bandai is the biggest toy capsule brand out there and as far as I can figure out, they have much more control on who gets their machines and their gacha (more on that later).
Now with machine basics out of the way, my research into them has found that it’s hard to the Japanese style gacha machines in the U.S. The limiting factors for a regular person owning one of these thing is availability and cost. It’s not easy finding one outside of Japan, especially a Bandai one unless you’re an authorized Bandai dealer.
The one place I easily found them on was eBay. Most listings I ran across were for around $500 bucks, which doesn’t account for the shipping (usually from Japan) or any kind of tariffs, so we’re talking a serious investment to get one.
I figured it wasn’t in the cards for me to get my own gacha machine.
Bandai’s Half Scale Machine
Then suddenly, I found a compromise! Bandai made 1/2 scale gashapon machines at the fraction of the cost of the full sized unit. I figured I’d get one of these and I’d be all set.
Then I got one and I was not all set.
The main issues with Bandai’s 1/2 scale gashapon machine are:
1. The gacha capsules are too small to fit most “regular” sized gacha toys. I think the capsules it takes are somewhere in the 30mm range and the toy size capsules I like are mostly in the 50-65mm range.
2. It feels like this thing won’t stand up to rigorous use with randos and kids at cons cranking on it.
I’ve seen vendors using them at cons at their booths and they’re fantastic, especially if you have items that are small enough to fit in the capsules and you don’t expect a ton of heavy wear on the machine. They’re probably perfect for a lot of folks, but not for me. I wanted to sell bigger capsule toys. The real thing, as it were.
So after realizing I wasn’t exactly happy with Bandai’s 1/2 scale machine, I still enjoy it as a toy of sorts, but it wouldn’t meet my vending needs. I went back to looking for a full size machine, thinking I could come up with a solution before I eventually gave up.
A Bandai gashapon “Capsule Station” from a random website.
Ebay & Other sites
I kept turning to eBay and various other vending machine sites, trying to find a way to get a machine that wasn’t $500 (pre-shipping). If I were to get one of those and add on shipping and tariffs from Japan, it felt pretty astronomical.
On other websites I found machines that were either too small or too expensive. And most of these sites I’d never heard of before or had no ability to trust if they were legit or not.
I discovered some Tomy machines in the U.S. that seemed like they could work. They’re generally a couple hundred dollars cheaper than the Bandai machines. The issues I’ve found with them is that they are still fairly small, dispensing gacha that are around 40mm-ish max, but some I’ve seen are limited by what coins that they take. I liked one, but it only took up to four quarters. Four quarters is not going to be enough to pay for a Japanese style gacha (more on that later).
Gacha machines from a Chinese manufacturer.
Alibaba
Then I turned to where I had been avoiding since I began my gacha machine search, Alibaba. Alibaba is a site that business owners can connect with Chinese manufactors. I’d used them before to make the Street Wolves USB tapes. I didn’t want to go with them this time, because honestly I was worried I’d be hit with some insane tariff. Or be scammed. Either one was kind of terrifying.
There’s a few types of machines that you can find on Alibaba. However, one model that pops up a lot looks like Bandai’s old gashapon machines. I’m guessing they just copied that one or they used to make them and now just sell them directly, who knows.
Side note: There are some fancier ones that have lights and digital displays. I wanted one that didn’t require any power. I can more readily repair an all mechanical machine than one that has electrical bits and bobs and power at conventions often comes with a premium cost.
I found a distributor that sells gacha machines for less than $150 a piece. Compared to the eBay ones that are around $500 it certainly seemed like a steal. My fear of being scammed was being overcome by my intense desire to have my own full size gacha machine, even if I was being scammed.
I then sent the supplier a bunch of questions, and they answered all of them. I primarily wanted reassurance that the machine took 50-70mm capsules (they do), that you can get them to use tokens (yes), if I could get them with Japanese stickers* (yes), would I have to handle a bunch of overseas shipping paperwork (no), and I wouldn’t be hit with extra any extra tarrifs above the price they quoted me (no).
That last answer really required a leap of faith on my part. I’d had to trust they were baking all that into the price and I wasn’t going to get a huge surprise tax bill at the end (yes tariffs are taxes). I took the rep’s word for it and hoped for the best.
After getting the satisfactory answers I was now faced with a dilemma: Shipping for one machine was going to cost more than the machine itself! The good news was it was still less than the cost of the machines on eBay! That got me thinking… if I was already paying that much for shipping… why not buy two machines!? That would cut the cost of shipping in half per machine!
Yes, this is the way my brain works. But to add to my argument for buying two machines, it seemed like a pain to display only one at a convention. The 1/2 scale Bandai machines are easy to have on a table, but the full size one would take up a lot of precious space. If I got two machines I could stack them on top of each other, then it could be a free standing unit and I wouldn’t have to worry about table space being much an issue.
My final hurdle was: where the heck am I going to put these things when I’m not using them? We have way too much stuff in the house, especially in our storage areas. I’ve been working on reducing it, but we have a long ways to go. I realized we had space in the living room where I could just park a stacked unit. It could be a conversation piece or some such when not in use. I dunno. A modern day object like a grandfather clock that takes up a bunch of space, I guess? Boom, that issue was solved.
Having done mental gymnastics and twisting my mind enough to feel good about buying two gacha machines, I put the order in. The good news was that the cost of two machines plus shipping was still a couple dollars less than my benchmark set by the eBay offerings.
*I really wanted Japanese stickers because it looked better than the English words. The fact you can’t read it isn’t that big of a deal when I’ll be about two feet from someone explaining how they work.
The machines I got from China.
My Gacha Machines
I was told it was going to be 90 days and it was an agonizing wait. Luckily, it took about 60 days before they showed up via UPS truck.
Putting it together was pretty easy. There’s not a lot to do. The downside is that there weren’t any instructions. I found some videos online in between asking my contact for instructions. After I had it almost all together he sent some videos and one in particular really helped with the stop sign (a small sign that drops down when the machine is empty to warn people to stop putting coins in) which was the most complicated thing to assemble by far.
After they were all set up I made a couple of display inserts. For the top machine the gacha I ordered didn’t come with a display, so I had to take an image I found of them online and use photoshop to makes some tweaks. The other one I made using assets from canva. After a trip to the local print shop I had signs for the machines.
I’m still working out exactly how to use the display space at the top. I need to get some putty or something to stick figures down so they don’t get knocked about when I have the machines at a con.
Gacha Suppliers and Cost Problems
While mostly everything has worked out for the best in this epic tale, one thing I really haven’t hit upon is the actual gacha toys themselves. Where do you get them? Honestly, I don’t have a super great source yet. The biggest issue is that most of them come from Japan (surprise). If you want the kind of high quality gacha toys they have in Japan, you’re not going to find them made in the U.S. And that means you have to pay a lot for our two friends: Shipping and tariffs.
The greatest weakness of gacha machines here in the U.S. is that they can’t be as low priced as they are in Japan. To even make a dollar of profit on a gacha capsule, I have to price them for only a buck or two more than what I’ve paid for them, making them close to double what they would cost in Japan. I have the feeling that a lot of people in the U.S. don’t think that a very small figure or toy is worth six dollars (or more). Three dollars? Probably. Six? That’s something you have to think about.
The real issue here is since I’ll only be making a buck or two off of each capsule toy I sell and I’m only bringing the machines to cons a few times a year, I have to sell at least three to five hundred gacha capsules to pay for the machines. Woof. I can see it taking a long time for the machines to pay for themselves.
I think I’d have better chances bringing in more sales if I had more choices and a variety of toys to offer at once, but I’m limited to two machines. I’m crossing my figures that people like the ones I have.
Okay, so where does one get gacha toys in bulk? I’ll share the three places I’ve gotten them or plan to so far:
- Wholesale Japan: I’ve heard a lot of bad things about them. Still, I’ve done a test order. Out of the two sets I ordered, one was cancelled. The other is on the way to me now. So no review on this one yet, but I’m hopeful.
- BC Mini: This is a seller that has their own site, but I’ve purchased from them on Faire as a wholesaler. They have a pretty decent selection. The downside is they don’t come with the sales inserts. I believe they’re parting out sets of capsules, which would explain why you don’t get the insert. Basically you can get something like 10 capsules from them instead of 20 from other places. I could be wrong though.
- Alibaba: I have seen a few capsule toys on the site and the manufacturer I purchased my gacha machines from also offers them. I may be putting in a test order with the manufacturer soon.
Final Thoughts
I haven’t had a chance to bring my machines to any conventions yet, but I’m still happy I got them. It’s just fun owning them. It’s like a cool piece of furniture right now with the potential to get a little back hauling it around to cons.
I would be tempted to get a couple more if a few things fall into place. For a start, the tariff situation needs to calm the heck down. It’s a ridiculous extra tax on small businesses. I also would need some more room to store two more. And I would also need to see some really positive response to the ones I already have when I’m vending with them at cons.
As a table top game maker, a gachapon machine may not exactly fit in with everything I’m creating now, but I hope they have the same vibe I’m bringing. I want the stuff I make and carry to bring joy to people. And if I can bring a little bit of the joy I found in gacha machines to folks in the U.S., then that would be awesome.