Gashapon

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Gashapon (ガシャポン), also called gachapon (ガチャポン), is a kind of vending machine-dispensed capsule toy manufactured and sold by Bandai and popular in Japan. It originated in the 1960s.^[1]

The word Gashapon, a Bandai trademark, is onomatopoeic from two sounds, gasha (or gacha) for the hand-cranking action of a toy-vending machine, and pon for the toy capsule landing in the collection tray.^[2] Gashapon is used for both the machines themselves and the toys obtained from them.

Popular capsule toy manufacturers include Tomy, which uses the trademark gacha (ガチャ, gacha) for their capsule machines, and Kaiyodo. In many countries and territories including Japan, China, the United States, the European Union (European Union trade mark) and the United Kingdom, Gashapon is a registered trademark of Bandai.^{[3][4][5][6][7]} The capsule toy model has been adapted digitally into numerous gacha video games, such as mobile phone games and massively multiplayer online games (MMOs).