Japan’s capsule toy industry has come a long way from the corner of the supermarket, as it enjoys a new boom at home that is spurring multiple market players to set their sights on overseas expansion. The Japan Toy Association estimates the capsule toy market was worth 61 billion yen (US$378 million) in the 2022 financial year, up 35.6 per cent in one year, and expects it to grow further.
“We probably still have about two years of headroom in the Japanese market, but there’s just a physical limit to how many stores can open in shopping centres and bring in new business,” said Daisuke Morikuni, director of the capsule toy department at Yell, a toy and prize maker focusing on producing original character designs. Insiders say 600 to 700 product series are set to be released each month this summer by around 60 toymakers. Yell is expanding into Asian markets such as Taiwan and South Korea with its offbeat, cute toys, including its headline range of praying animal toys.
Overseas customers account for about 10 per cent of its capsule toy sales. According to Tomy, better known as Takara Tomy and one of the two big players in the market along with Bandai, the forerunner to today’s dispensers were first imported from the United States in 1965. Their true breakthrough came in 1983, when erasers shaped like the buffed-up titular character from the anime and manga ignited a craze among children, resulting in Bandai selling 180 million of these toys at the time.
Today, the marke.