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The Most Affordable Anime Figures – Prize Figure and Trading Figure

First of all, I want to express my sincere thanks again to your continuously interest on the topic of Types of Anime Figures. This is part III, the final chapter of the topic. Before we carry on to explore The Most Affordable Anime Figures – Prize Figure and Trading Figure, let’s recap what we have walked through in the previous articles. If this is your first time here to look around my article, I would better suggest you to start reading from part I of this topic.

In the first chapter, we have understood what is scale figure and action figure respectively. For example, some of the restricted cast-off figure is scale figure category while the popular series of figma is no doubt an action figure category, etc.

In the second chapter, we have explored another three categories of anime figures in details, the chibi figure like nendoroid, the high-quality figure like G.E.M. series and the unassembled garage kit figure. Still remember the question for the topic? Let’s state again.

What are the Most Affordable Anime Figures?

Come to the final chapter, I will walk you through so call the most affordable anime figures as well as its relevant types of anime figures.

Prize Figure

Noodle Stopper Figure
Ichiban Kuji
EXQ Figure
Gashapon

Trading Anime Figure

Prize Figure

If high-quality figure is more suitable for experienced collectors who are more focus on quality, prize figure should be the best category to be collected by newbies who love anime figure. Just the opposite to high-quality figure, prize figure is normally lower in sculptured quality and might not be on scale. However, it is so popular nowadays’ anime figure market in Japan and even in Hong Kong. The major reasons are that prize figure is often bundled with anime, games or other products. And, it is usually related to their close sibling scale figure, but the price level is more economy.

As a prize, these figures are put inside a claw or crane machine. People required to buy tokens to play it for winning their favorite figure. Just a reference that if you are playing very well, maybe you can win your figure within 3,000 yen. For my own experience, I won the below figure by only 300 yen. So lucky to me!

Noodle Stopper Figure

One of the prize figures can be drawn from crane machine is noodle stopper figure. This is a funny but helpful mini figure produced by FuRyu. It is a Japanese entertainment company based in Tokyo mainly publishing and developing video & mobile games, multimedia content and anime figures. Why so funny but helpful? It can place on the lid of your cup noodles to held it down by its weight when you are waiting for its readiness. Or you can just put it on the edge of your furniture for display.

The pose of this type of figure is usually sitting or leaning over. You can imagine how funny it is if you placed a leaning over mini figure, say Asuna of Sword Art Online, on your cup noodle while you are waiting for its readiness!

Regardless you love ramen or not, this type of anime figure could be placed anywhere around your working or living environment without taking up much space. With its funny pose and wide range of anime or game characters it featured, noodle stopper figure should be played a healing role for all of us.

Meanwhile, some rarer prize figure can only be obtained through lottery system in Japan. You need to purchase a voucher from some specialized manufacturers booths in Japan while each voucher is associated with a letter and a given value. You will win the rarer prize figure only if your voucher is randomly picked. Surely, the quality of these kinds of rarer prize figure depends on how high is the value of the voucher.

Ichiban Kuji

It is the most famous and well-known rarer prize figure series produced by Banpresto. Their win-win marketing strategy made them become distinctive to other lotteries. The tickets of Ichiban Kuji are released monthly. It can easily be bought from those convenience stores, bookstores and hobby shops in Japan. If you purchased the ticket of Ichiban Kuji, you can always get a prize. The ticket with A or B marked on it refers to the rarest prizes you can get.

While, it also has exclusive merchandises that is only available for this series. It is because Ichiban Kuji has franchised with many popular anime like One Piece, Dragon Ball and Pokemon, etc.

EXQ Figure

EXQ figure is another series of rarer prize figure, which is also produced by Banpresto. What I can say is this series is a surprise for collectors when they get it.

Basically, these figures are at a much higher price range but putting together with the general prize figures for your lucky playing. And, this series of PVC & ABS figures are produced in big size, around 20cm or above. That means you have chance to get a good quality and big figure by lower cost.

EXQ figure always feature popular anime characters such as One Piece or Sword Art Online, etc. I do think you must want to display it in your shelf!

Gashapon (also calls Gachapon)

Besides claw or crane machines and lottery system, another mechanism for drawing prize figure is the vending machine dispensed capsule toys. We call it gashapon or gachapon.

Actually, prizes being drawn from the vending machine are not only anime figures. It includes wide range of products produced by varies brands. For example, sleepy cat and Japanese tableware by Epoch, dog head wall magnet by Kitan Club.

And the series of Kamen Rider, Mobile Suit Gundam, Detective Conan by Bandai, etc. Gashapon is no doubt the category of capsule toys. However, as we are talking about anime figures, I better group it into prize figure category owing to the mechanism.

There are 2 types of gashapon. The first one is Blind-box, which is actually the same product you randomly draw from the vending machines but recently traded by sealed packages. While, the second one is Bottle Cap Figure. In fact, it is not real bottle cap but is a figure mounted on top of a plastic bottle cap selling through vending machines or blind boxes.

From budget point of view, gashapon should be the way of getting prize figure at the lowest risk. You can be at ease trying your luck to draw out a not alike prize figure!

Trading Anime Figure

The last paragraph has just slightly mentioned what is blind-box where I would like to go further here. Practically, the strategy of using blind-box on anime figure does not only applicable for gashapon. It also extended to another type of sales model. Manufacturers have their own variation of small figures packaging in sets (commonly sets of 6) with higher quality than gashapon, in which a secret special figure included. Basically, it sells through the blind pick system that means you don’t know which figure you have purchased from the sets. Somewhat, however, it also allows collectors purchasing it in sets. This is undoubtedly the easiest way to collect the whole set of figures, which enhanced the interest of collectors. This marketing strategy is so called trading anime figure.

Recently, trading anime figures is running on wide variation of collections like Dragon Ball, One Piece, Mobile Suit Gundam, etc. Showing the whole collection in your shelf should not be worse than other categories of anime figures.

Assuredly, the above categorization could not include all types of anime figures in the current market. There are many other types that have not been mentioned here or could not be classified instead. For example, the series of SIC figure which should also be categorized as action figure. The acrylic stand figure who should be prize figure or even could not be named as anime figure!

However, this is not my purpose of writing this topic. As mentioned at the end of the first chapter, what I have shared here is the information relevant to your hobbies. I hope it can give you some insights to better select your favorite anime figures by means of its categories. Whenever you want to clarify the types of anime figures you are showing in the shelf, you are welcome to re-visit here to get a reference.

Come to the end of the topic, I would like to say thank you to all of you who have spent time to read through the articles from part I to part III. I look forward to meeting you again in other corners around AF Zone soon. Sincerely, if you have any comments on this topic, you are always welcome to drop me a line below for our further improvement.