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Perhaps, you have seen it on the video or some TV show that Anime Capsule Toys are huge market in Japan. The revenue is not quite as high as it used to be when I was in the junior high school over 15 years ago. And yet, it is still a strong market. The Capsule machine is called "Gacha-Gacha" in Japan. It is named after the sound of capsules dropping inside the machine. Those machines will give a small figures of anime character made with rubber. Back in 80's, children would collect those rubber made figures and exchange or fight with the other rubber to play. Kin Niku Man was the most popular rubber figure in those days, and they are called "Kin-Keshi" (Kin comes from KinNikuMan, and Keshi comes from Keshigomu, which is a rubber eraser).
The history of Anime Capsule Toys is rather young. They arrived to Japan in 1965 from the U.S. company called Peanuts Vendor. Back then, the price of a capsule was only 10 yen. In 1969, 100yen machines were imported to Japan and set to the bowling places. It was originally targetted to boys, so inside the capsules are small pistols and such that boys would be happy to have. The first era of KinKeshi and Gundam rubber figures were in 1980's, and the second ear came around 2002 when Akihabara Gachapon Store opened, which was a dedicated Anime Capsule Toy store.
According to the records, the toy market in Japan in 2001 was 912 billion yen and the capsule toys share 25 billion yen. The figure market by the way is 150 billion yen, so you know how big it is in Japan. It is still a strong market even recently. As it does not require any big space to place the machine, the culture of capsules are now spreading to major cities in Tokyo, such as Shibuya and Harajyuku. Just a few years ago, 200 major famous machines were gathered together in Harajyuku and GachaGachaExpo took place. Recently, the products inside the capsules are moving towards the female targetted goods like fashion related merchandise. Furthermore, companies that are making those machines are now targetting to the elders so that they will bring back their memories. The products realted to IT and technically advanced robots are often time included in those capsules as well.
Akihabara is one of the best places to see huge variety of them. Like many other toys such as puzzles, collectibles, and posters, the Capsule toy machines govern 1/3 of the floor space in the shop in Akihabara. If you see any dubbed or subtitled videos of say Naruto, chances are, there are literally dozens of Anime Capsule Toys on Naruto. The recent incident of rasing price of crude oil may threaten the market, however, I do believe that the companies will find a way to continously grow their capsule business as there are so many other non rubber relied products out there.
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