While I can’t find a consistent figure for the market size of ‘blind box’ toys, multiple sources place it in the billions worldwide, and rising. Anecdotally, it feels as if a boom is happening around the trend of
- buying a mystery item from an advertised possible range of outcomes
- if you’ve got the emotional energy (plus budget), attempting to collect them all.
I base this observation on a recent walk around one of London’s Westfield shopping centres where two, prime location stores Miniso and Kenji are selling these products to the masses. It’s not limited to specialist stores either, you’ll find this proposition in the toy aisle of supermarkets.
It’s also not new.
I’m not hinting at the LOL! Surprise doll range that launched ten years ago in 2016 here, or the vinyl toy explosion of the 2000s from the likes of KidRobot. Adding a gambling-lite element to collecting has long proven to be a fun, if not widely exploitative model for generations. Look at sticker packs or trading cards.
The Gashapon stores (see our video below) opening around the UK are imported from Japan, who’ve had them since the 1960s, with roots in the US before that.
For all the emotions collecting provides, bolting on an initial ‘leap of faith’ stage adds a bunch more to the experience.
I’ve just purchased not one, but two miniature sized record players. One by ZURU Mini Brands, the other by MGA Miniverse. Each company has also created spherical shaped blind boxes that come with four appropriately sized vinyl records, bundled at random, which play when placed on the respective turntables.
It’s either a total coincidence that two manufacturers have launched a similar product at the same time, or indicative of how fast this market is growing.
I could give you a comparison of the two, but (fortunately) plenty of others have already beaten me to it, including an analysis of each in the context of how well they work alongside Barbie and other doll collections. Fair play.
While the modern Gashapon machines take multiple credit tokens that cost in the region of £2 each to purchase, most UK readers will likely be more familiar with an altogether cheaper alternative. These machines don’t fill modern looking spaces on thriving high streets. These battered old models are more likely to be found, on their last legs outside a corner shop or as a footnote to every else crammed into a seaside town gift shop.
It’s from these machines that a small treasured collection I have to this day was birthed.
In the 1990s and early 2000s our family would regularly stay at caravan sites in Cornwall. One in particular became our regular go-to, Summer Lodge, near Newquay. I have lots of quintessential 90s memories of this place, seeing Geri Halliwell had quit the Spice Girls on the front page of the newspapers in the site shop, watching my Nan struggling to comprehend the sounds made in Fatboy Slim’s The Rockafeller Skank. Era defining moments.
A tradition emerged of making a bee line to the capsule machines upon arrival to see what plastic tat could be acquired in exchange for 20p a go. My brother and I pooled our resources in an attempt to collect one particular line, another iconic 90s staple, aliens👽.
As the years went by, the style of aliens changed, and we probably never had a full set of each (looking at them now, who knows if there even was a definitive checklist), but that added to the draw – “what would the aliens look like this year?”.
This is a collection I’ve wanted to document since I began writing about collector culture. For whatever reason, the article never came to be before now. I’d even done some research for it to see if I could I find any reference to them online. Generally speaking, mid to late 90s niche doesn’t have great coverage on the internet. Nor have I ever seen these throwaway pieces for sale at any of the toy fairs we frequent.
The best result was a listing for these, parachuting aliens. They look similar in design to the later years that we collected, but these were being sold as a box of party favours rather than inside a capsule, or ‘egg’ as we might have called it back then.
The article remained parked in the back of my mind. My eyes still drawn to any dispensing machines I ever saw on my travels, as if some day I might find one still filled with extra-terrestrial friends. Alas, most seemed more to be targeting the ‘precious’ stones and crystals audience than kids hyped up on E numbers.
Then, a few months back, after having had a few beers in Exeter, I spotted a stack of four machines. I couldn’t believe it. ALIENS.
If I’d had the correct change (50p which, I’ve checked, is above inflation from 20p in 1998) I’d have bought them there and then. Instead I went back and got two the next day – the first additions to a collection frozen in time, over a quarter of a century ago.
Look, I’m a 38 year old man, with a career and mortgage, albeit no dependents, why do I care about this in the slightest? Besides my interest in collecting, the culture, psychology and the fact I still collect like it’s a professional endeavour. I like this collection because, although I’m the custodian of it, it does in part belong to my brother too.
My brother. Possibly the least likely person I know to collect nowadays, and yet, the person I immediately messaged to let him know of my find.
Me: “They still exist bruv! 👽”
Him: “😂 where are you?”
We couldn’t be more different now, and we were pretty different back then too. I had music, he had football. I had comics, he had Super Soakers. For whatever reason, for a brief moment in time, we connected on this collection. Or maybe I’m misremembering this whole situation and I just stole the few that he had to augment my own set? A happy memory either way.
Perhaps the greatest surprise from this mystery method of collecting came the year we turned up at Summer Lodge to find that the aliens had been replaced by.. ninjas 🥷.
Liam Toms 