Gashapon

Gashapon (ガシャポン), also called gachapon (ガチャポン), is a trademark of Bandai. Among the variety of vending machine-dispensed capsule toys that originated in the 1960s, it became popular in Japan and elsewhere. "Gashapon" is onomatopoeic from the 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. "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, United States, European Union (European Union trade mark) and the United Kingdom, "Gashapon" is a registered trademark of Bandai. The model of capsule toy has been adapted digitally into numerous gacha video games, such as mobile phone games and massively multiplayer online games (MMOs).