Japanese Trading Figures

Just after Christmas I was in a local toy+hobby store looking for a modeling knife to use in assembling a box of miniatures for Warhammer 40k (Cadian Kasrkin as Deamonhunter Stormtroopers for those geek enough to be curious). As we made our way through the store we passed a glass case filled with small figures of various sorts. There were figures of popular Japanese anime characters, highly detailed miniature Star Wars helmets, miniature sets of Japanese and Roman swords, helmets and armor and lots of other things. On top of the case were unopened boxes of Naruto figs. When I picked one up I realized that all the figures in the case were from ‘blind assortment’ or ‘trading figures’ sets.

The concept here is quite similar to a pack of sports or game trading cards: The box is sealed with no indication of what may be inside other than a guide to what figures are in that particular set. I’ve had experience with this sort of arrangement when I was collecting Gloomy Bear keychains. I can imagine that in Japan where the figures are popular, retailers actually sell the closed boxes to kids and adults, who then stand some sort of chance of actually trading or selling their duplicates in order to complete their sets or find their favorite characters. Here in the US (at least in Utah where I live) it seems that since there isn’t a large enough customer base for trading, most stores just open the boxes and sell them as ‘what you see is what you get’.

I bought ‘Libra’ and ‘Capricorn’ from a bizzarely sculpted set that seemed to be the signs of the Zodiac as demons. Libra is especially cool with a heart on one scale and lead weight on the other, perfectly balancing each other out. Recall that the Egyptian myth has the heart weighed against a feather and its easy to imagine the heart being weighed by Libra comes from someone who likely didn’t get much for Christmas.

These figures are cool, but they each held one more secret. The word ‘Yanoman’ sculpted into the underside of each figurines base. ‘Yanoman’ was the key to a whole new world of future spending.

The toy and hobby shop only had 6 or 7 figures of a set I assumed to number 12 (12 signs of the Zodiac). To top it off a few of the figures were paint ‘variants’ of other figures on the shelf. I wanted to get Fortune the mini Zodiac Demon of Taurus, but they didn’t have it. So I made my purchase and went home.

BEHOLD, THE POWER OF THE INTERNET!

At home a quick Google search (tip: ‘Google’ is not a verb!) for Yanoman brought up several results leading to various figure sets. But the most interesting thing was the realization that there were HUNDREDS of different ‘trading sets’. Everything from scantily clad girls to samurai to ‘japanese wisdom’ to video game characters and more. Theres even a really cool chess piece replacement set featuring characters from The Nightmare Before Christmas!

There is no way I can afford the figures from all the different sets that I want so I’ve been giving some thought to ordering these by the case and selling my duplicates either through the store here (buy.podsix.com) or on ebay. If you’re a collector of these kinds of figures and may be interested in trades let me know!