Toys Yoshida (Asahikawa, Japan)

During my trip to Hokkaido last month, I visited a couple toy stores. The first was Toys Yoshida located in the city of Asahikawa, and as you can probably conclude from the photos, it was a rainy day. After browsing both this store and a Toys "R" Us later, my assumption is that kids in Japan prefer die-cast cars, trains, robots, dinosaurs, LEGO, model kits, and jigsaw puzzles. What I didn't see much of was Star Wars, superheroes, and Barbie, though Japan does have its own fashion doll called Licca, which was first released by Takara in 1967. The small anthropomorphic animal figures called Sylvanian Families also appear popular. According to Wikipedia, those launched in Japan in 1985 and are known in the U.S. as Calico Critters. 

Window on the side of the store.

The most surprising thing I saw in this store was realistic toy guns. Japan is known for having strict gun laws, yet while the U.S. moved away from realistic toy guns some time ago and require something like an orange tip on toy weapons, Japan has the most real looking toy guns I've ever seen. Normally I avoid posting images of guns and don't post screenshots from M-rated games, but I'm going to include a photo since I'm talking about them. They are only toys after all, though you might not have realized that if I wasn't telling you so  Of course, the store has gacha machines too, which are at the front entrance rather than inside the store. There were at least a few dozen of those. 

[YouTube] A Few Things From Japan

https://youtu.be/GjDOUDNF5jU

My previous post, which was more than a month ago, mentioned that the article I scanned was fitting for the time without giving a reason. Well, that article was about Japanese toys, and a week after I posted that, I was in Japan! Like many other geeks and gamers, I'd wanted to visit Japan for a long time, at least 25 years. Despite the way things have been the past year and half, which, to say the least, haven't been great, I decided to go anyway. In early August I turned 50 and this was a gift to myself. It was my first time outside of North America as driving to Ontario, Canada had been the extent of my international travels up until now. While most people go to Tokyo, Kyoto, and Osaka, I visited the northern island of Hokkaido. However, I did miss a connection flight at Haneda Airport on the way there and got stuck in Ota City the first night. In any case, this isn't a travel blog, so I'm not going to write too much about the trip, but I will have a few posts after this one related to toys and games.

Gundam store at New Chitose Airport

Aside from snacks, I actually didn't bring back too much. I'd hoped to find some cool Sega collectibles, but I didn't come across any. In fact, I saw almost nothing Sega-related. All I recall seeing is some Sonic the Hedgehog socks at a Mega Don Quijote store in Kushiro. There was probably other Sonic stuff around that I didn't notice, however, I was not looking for Sonic things. As far as non-food items, I bought a few gifts for others, one Tomica car for myself, collected a Star Wars capsule toy from a gacha machine, purchased an exclusive Gundam keychain at an airport, and picked up a couple packs of baseball cards.

Tomica

From what I gather, TakaraTomy die-cast cars are separate from the Tomica line. The TakaraTomy cars are packaged in red and white boxes, while the Tomica vehicles are in black boxes and cost a bit more. I try not to buy toys anymore, but I couldn't resist the Toyota AE86 Sprinter Trueno from Initial D, which is one of my favorite animé series. Tomica makes other Initial D cars too, and I did consider getting the yellow Mazda RX-7, but resisted. I thought the price was too high at about $9, and that was before I opened it to find the car wasn't any bigger than the 1/64 scale cars, despite the packaging being twice the size of those for the standard Tomica products.

Mobile Suit Gundam Keychain

Another animé I enjoy is the original Mobile Suit Gundam. On my way home I passed through New Chitose Airport, the site of a Gundam store with a couple exclusive items. The keychain I purchased features the original Gundam with a map of Hokkaido behind it. I didn't get the other exclusive, which was a t-shirt with the same image.

Demon Slayer

Here's another manga/animé item, but not a comic book/show I'm familiar with. Japan Rail (JR) had Demon Slayer character stamps set up at stations across Hokkaido. I only found two of them and I'm guessing each box in the free booklet represents a specific character, but I didn't know which was which so I stamped them anywhere. I also used the blank page for some other location stamps since I didn't have a proper stamp book. There were JR trains with Demon Slayer art as well. The display and train photos were taken at Asahikawa Station.

Gacha Capsule Toy

I'll likely write a little more about the gacha machines that I saw just about everywhere I went in another post. I decided I'd try it once for the experience, so I found a Star Wars machine and got a Stormtrooper. 

Mario Stickers/Candy

These are gifts so I'm not going to open them to see what's inside. There were a variety of items on racks packed like these stickers for 100 yen each. They weren't all stickers, just other inexpensive things with a popular license attached. The tiny piece of chocolate was maybe 15 yen. 

Pokémon

When it comes to licensing, Pokémon was what I saw the most of. I flew on All Nippon Airways' (ANA) Vulpix Pokémon plane where they use colored cups to serve water, and even on the non-Pokémon planes there is some branding on the seats, a safety video with the characters, and less colorful cups. Of course, I kept the cups, though I think most passengers tossed them. Also, I attended a baseball game in Sapporo which happened to be a special night. Captain Pikachu was in attendance and I received a 9" long image of Captain Pikachu.

Baseball Cards

Speaking of baseball, I'd wanted to get some baseball cards while I was in Japan and they turned out to be surprisingly difficult to find. I thought they'd be sold at convenience stores, but they aren't and the only place I eventually found them were at a couple toy stores. The first place I came across them was at a strip mall in Kitami so I bought a pack of Bowman and a pack of Topps. They're from two years ago, though I didn't care about that. There were some other brands there that I wasn't familiar with, and the images on those packs made me think they might be minor league cards, though I have no idea if that was the case. On the last day of my trip I visited a Toys "R" Us and there were a bunch of 2025 packs, but I decided not to get anymore. I was just curious to see some, I didn't want to spend too much on them. 

I also came across a couple snack food items with cards attached. One is a bag of chips from Calbee and the other is a rice snack from Bandai Namco.

KitKat

A favorite candy bar in the U.S., KitKat is a hit in Japan as well. Although there isn't much variety here in North America, Japan is known for its numerous KitKat flavors. Long before I visited Japan, I once purchased some green tea KitKats online, but I didn't like them too much, so I passed on trying them again, though it was one of the six flavors I came across during my trip. The flavor I wanted to get was Yubari Melon, which is exclusive to Hokkaido. Unfortunately, despite visiting many stores, I never saw them. I ended up getting strawberry, chocolate orange, milk tea, and chocolate mint ice cream flavors.

Pringles

Another popular American snack is Pringles potato chips, and in Hokkaido they have an exclusive scallop, butter, and soy flavor. It's packaged in a shiny box that includes three small cans. I'm not someone who likes to try new foods and this doesn't sound appealing to myself, so I can't tell you how they taste. I only bought them to use as gifts for friends and family.

UPDATE 9/28/25: This may not be of much interest, but I opened the Bandai Namco baseball snack that Google Translate said is a rice cracker. It was crunchy with a mild spiciness, leaving a bit of a burning aftertaste.

Gang of Five (Collecting Toys - August 1994)

I was scanning a different article from the August 1994 issue of Collecting Toys magazine when I came across this one about Japanese toy robots. It seemed fitting to post about this one first and this week, though I won't say why until maybe next month. The article is about five toys made in Japan during the 1950s by Masudaya's Modern Toys, and they are quite rare today. Although I've never specifically collected robots, I have shared photos of some that I do own, and this is the second magazine article about toy robots I've posted this year. The first was The Robot Invasion from a 1984 issue of Boys' Life.

Year 9: August Update

When I went to write this post I was surprised to find that I hadn't actually written a monthly update since February. Unfortunately, I don't have much planned other than to keep scanning some magazine articles, and I do have more video game ads to share eventually. Despite not having a lot of actual work to do, it feels like I've been busy and I haven't kept up on much game and toy news. The best announcement I saw recently was LEGO's Batman Arkham Asylum, a 2,953-piece set that comes with 16 mini-figures, including Batman, Robin, Batwoman, Catwoman, and nine villains dressed in orange jumpsuits. It releases on September 5th at a price of $299.99. Also, now available from LEGO is the Decepticon Soundwave, who joins the previous LEGO incarnations of Optimus Prime and Bumblebee. He does transform and has cassettes of Laserbeak and Ravage. The 1,505-piece set is available exclusively at the LEGO online store for $189.99.

Another new toy announcement comes from Jakks Pacific. Apparently there was a Sonic the Hedgehog and DC crossover comic book back in March, and now there are action figures based on it. Jakks Pacific will be releasing a variety of figures, including single Sonic characters dressed as superheroes, such as Sonic as The Flash, Amy as Wonder Woman, and Silver as Green Lantern. There will also be double packs of Superman with Knuckles, Batman with Shadow, and Cyborg with Tails. Jakks unveiled new action figures in its Super Mario line and The Simpsons too.

As far as video games, well, Nintendo did release the Switch 2 since I last wrote an update. That was June 5th, the week before the former week of E3. It costs $499.99 and is less powerful than its competitors as usual, though it is getting some of the higher end games that previously released on PlayStation and Xbox systems. I didn't find anything too exciting come out of the aforementioned former E3 week. Maybe it's because I'm getting old, though I think it has more to do with the lack of originality being shown, plus I don't own any hardware new enough to play most of the big games releasing these days. 

Yep, that was a short update. Sorry it's been such a slow year for the blog!

Thanks for reading,
Jonathan