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Draft:Food toys

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Takara Tomy "World Tank Museum" 3rd release Panther G late model 3-color camouflage, size comparison with SD card (2007)

Food toys is a general term for toys that are provided together with the purchase of things like gum or candy.

This concept comes from and is widely spread in Japan where it's abbreviated as shokuwan. It originally meant a product consisting of a set with the candy as the original product and the toy as a free gift.

In industry jargon, it is also called "toy candy". In the toy industry, the Japanese term was used to mean "edible toys" (candy in the shape of a toy; bubble gum is also classified there as this), but the term "food toys" is more commonly used..[1]

They are designed to stimulate consumers' desire to collect and induce bulk buying.[2].

Due to the aging of the candy toy buyers, there are now food toy CDs with a CD attached and food toy DVDs with a DVD attached.

Food Toys in Culture

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  • Galette des Rois - A fève (a ceramic model) is placed in the dough, and whoever finds a fève in the cut pie or galette will be happy for a year, or become king among those who share the pie for a day. (Brittany, France)
  • Riisipuuro - Sweet rice pudding. Only one peeled almond is placed in it, and whoever finds it will be happy in the next year. The almonds have the power to give a spouse to single people and children to married women. (Christmas after the 1800s, Finland)
  • Buche de Noel - When mixing the ingredients, make a wish and put a coin or ring inside. If one of the coins is in your cake when you cut it, the wish corresponding to that thing will come true. (Christmas, France)
  • Scones - When making multiple scones, put a coin in the dough, and whoever gets the scone with it inside will be happy. (Hungary)
  • Cloudy - A ring, coin, and marbles are mixed into the soup, and whichever one you scoop up will tell you your fortune for the year. (Halloween, Celtic)
  • Wedding cake - Whoever gets the solitary kidney bean in the cake will be happy (England), and if an unmarried woman finds a ring inside, she will get married (Brazil).
  • Karakara Senbei - A hollow triangular rice cracker with a toy inside (Edo period). (Shonai and Tsuruoka regions)
  • Tsujiuranai sweets - Rice dumplings, mochi, and rice crackers with fortune-telling papers inside (New Year's in the Edo period. (Hokuriku and Chuetsu regions)
  • Fortune cookies - Cookies with papers with fortunes and sayings written on them. Tsujiuranai rice crackers turned into cookies. (1915 Panama Expo, USA)

History of Japanese Food Toys

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  • Edo period: In an era when it was difficult for ordinary people to travel, medicine sellers who traveled all over Japan, such as Toyama medicine sellers, provided customers with information about each place and local specialties as a bonus with their medicine. Medicine selling prints from the late Edo period to the Meiji period are particularly famous. They also provided children with toys such as paper balloons.
  • 1899: Murai Brothers Company's cigarettes started to come with tobacco cards (playing cards, photos of soldiers, and pictures of Western women). This imitated American cigarette promotions, and considered the de facto origin of commercial food toys in Japan. Children smoking cigarettes for the cards became a problem, and the following year, the Minors Smoking Prohibition Act (now the "Act on the Prohibition of Smoking by Persons Under 20") was enacted.
  • 1923: Ezaki Glico's candies started to come with cards. This promotional method was based on the tobacco cards, and this product marked the beginning of modern commercial food toys. In 1927 (Showa 2), medals began to be included.
  • 1952: Kabaya Foods started to include score cards with its Kabaya Caramel. If you collected score cards and entered the contest, you could win a book of a classic novel for elementary school students (Kabaya Bunko), a service that continued until 1954.
  • 1964: Meiji Seika Confectionery started to include Astro Boy stickers with its Marble Chocolate. This was the first candy toy to come with a character as a bonus, and from this point on, the number of candy toys featuring TV characters increased.[3].
  • February, 1967: Morinaga & Co., Ltd. released Chocoball. If you collected the randomly attached marks and entered a lottery, you could win a prize called a Manga Can. Until then, candy toys were sold by adding a bonus to existing snacks as a sales promotion, but this product was the first candy to be sold with a bonus attached from the start.
  • December, 1971: Calbee&Co.Ltd. (now Calbee) released Kamen Rider Snack. It came with a special Kamen Rider famous scene card. It became a huge hit among children, and a social problem occurred in which people bought snacks just to get the bonus famous scene card, but then threw away the snack itself.
  • 1973: Calbee Inc. released Professional Baseball Snacks. Following the popularity of Kamen Rider Snacks, it came with cards of professional baseball players.
  • 1977: Lotte released Bikkuriman Prank Stickers, which came with prank stickers. The product itself never gained any particular popularity, but after 10 revisions, 8 years later, "Bikkuriman Devil VS Angel Stickers" was born.
  • 1978: Kabaya Foods released Big One Gum in April. The plastic kit that came with it took up most of the package, and there was only one piece of gum, so it was said that "the gum is the freebie," and it can be said to be the ancestor of the later luxury candy toys. Instead of blind-type, there was a small window (hole) through which the numbers written in the assembly instructions could be seen, and the contents could be identified along with the catalog on the back of the package. This type of small window later becomes mainstream for Kabaya Foods' candy toys.
  • Mid-1980s: Sanyo Foods' Sapporo Boy Fun Cup was released. A plastic model and accessories were included inside a cup ramen container for children. This was the first candy toy for cup ramen.
  • 1985: Lotte's Bikkuriman Devil VS Angel Seal was released, which came with stickers of original characters. This caused various problems, such as the excessive production of similar products, as typified by Lotti, the buying and selling of stickers among children, and finally caused the intervention of the Fair Trade Commission. It was also the first candy toy to feature original manga or anime, in comparison to the ones based on existing manga or anime that had previously been used as bonuses. The success of this product led to the creation of a succession of candy toys with bonus pun stickers.
  • February 2, 1985: Snow Brand Foods (now Nippon Access, Inc.) released Dengeki Sentai Changeman sausages. A Dengeki Sentai Changeman doll was included with them. After this product, sausages, curries, and seasonings with the Super Sentai Series as a bonus continued to be released. This product continued to be released until Hyakujuu Sentai Gaoranger in 2001, but with Snow Brand Foods went out of business in 2002, the rights to the sausages of the Super Sentai Series were transferred to Prima Ham after Ninpuu Sentai Hurricaneger.
  • March 15, 1985: Marudai Foods released Kyoju Tokusou Jaspion Sausage. It came with a Kyoju Tokusou Jaspion card. From this point on, foods with special effects other than the Super Sentai series as a bonus had been released.
  • 1992: Calbee released J-League Chips. It was a soccer version of the professional baseball snack, and came with a soccer player card. Due to frequent thefts of the cards pasted on the outside of the packages, some stores took measures to remove the cards beforehand and have the staff hand them to the customer after paying.
  • 1997: Kinder Surprise was released by Kanro. It's an egg-shaped chocolate with a toy inside. This product was imported by Ferrero Japan from Ferrero Italy, and this was its second time being sold in Japan. It was a precursor to the chocolate egg trend that began two years later.
  • 1998: Pepsiman bottle caps started to be attached to Suntory Foods' Pepsi Cola. Japan's first bottle cap candy toy.
  • January, 1999: Fujiya's Mini-Mini Peko-chan was released. It came with Peko Poko dolls from around the world. It was so popular with adult women that sales were temporarily suspended in March due to a shortage of shipments, greatly expanding the customer base for food toys, which had previously been thought to be mainly made up of children and adult otaku. After this product, the candy toy market started to focus on adults.[4]
  • August 23, 1999: Suntory Foods' Pepsi Cola bottle caps start to be included with Star Wars series candy toys. After this, candy toys with bottle caps become popular and become standard.
  • September, 1999: Furuta Confectionery's Choco Egg Japanese Animal Series was released. Like Kinder Surprise, the toy was inside an egg-shaped chocolate. Not only was the quality of the design high, due to the involvement of the famous model maker Kaiyodo from the planning stage, but the fact that it didn't go out of fashion like with TV characters, and the inclusion of a secret item proved it successful, creating a social phenomenon that even involved adults. The impact on the food toys and figurine industry had been great, with the expansion of the industry and higher standards of quality.
  • 2002: Dydo Drinco's Dydo Demitasse Coffee canned coffee miniature toys of Japanese cars and classic cars supervised by the automobile magazine NAVI began to be included. Other companies in the industry followed suit for a limited time.
  • March 14, 2005: Bandai's Shinra Bansho Chocolate was released. Like the Bikkuriman Devil vs. Angel Stickers, it came with an original character cards. As a food toy from a toy company, it was highly popular mainly among otaku.
  • September, 2005: the Fair Trade Commission warned that the bottle caps from Mobile Suit Gundam SEED included with Suntory Foods' Pepsi Cola are not prizes but prizes in a contest, and that the bottle caps exceed the upper limit of the prize money. In response to this, Suntory changed the bags the bottle caps came in to transparent ones, and improved the product so that they were treated as prizes rather than prizes in a lottery. The Fair Trade Commission also requested the Japan Soft Drink Association not to use similar sales tactics.
  • August 31, 2009: Nissin Food Products released a limited number of Cup Noodles Soy Sauce Flavor of Cup Noodles Soy Sauce Packs, which are specially made original plastic robot models packed into cup noodles, the smallest in the Iropla Gundam series (1/380 scale) as a collaboration product to commemorate the 30th anniversary of Mobile Suit Gundam.
  • 2019: There was a debate over whether candy toys would be subject to the consumption tax increase (10%) from October of that year and the reduced tax rate (8%) that was introduced at the same time.
    • Candy toys usually positioned there as "toys with sweets" and are treated as "toys as the main component", so most food toys are subject to the Japanese consumption tax rate of 10%. However, according to the National Tax Agency's guidelines, if a product meets certain conditions, such as "price excluding tax is 10,000 yen or less" and "food accounts for more than two-thirds of the price", it is considered a "food or beverage" to which the reduced consumption tax rate of 8% applies. However, many manufacturers had indicated a policy of applying the reduced tax rate of 8% to products with food as the main component and 10% to products with toys as the main component, regardless of price. [5]

Representative candy toy series

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Source

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  1. ^ Kaminaga Eiji, Marusan Monogatari: Legends of the Golden Age of Toys, Asahi Shimbun Publications, 2009, pp. 241-242. ISBN 978-4-02-250550-7.
  2. ^ Kimiko Yokokawa, Kumiko Nobutoshi, Haruka Okada, Kaoruko Kitamura, Kaori Sakuratani, Toru Nishida, Masako Morita, Izumi Yamamoto (March 2006). "Life and cultural research on candy toys I: A memorandum on the location of candy toy information and the research method". Mukogawa Women's University Bulletin. Humanities and Social Sciences Edition. 53. Mukogawa Women's University: 109–117. doi:10.14993/00000158. ISSN 0916-3115. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |crid= ignored (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  3. ^ Kushima Tsutomu "Nostalgia Store "Phantom Food Store" Episode 28 "Exploring the Mystery of the Birth of Atom Stickers"", updated February 14, 2007.
  4. ^ DaCapo Magazine combined issue of January 3 and 17, 2001, p.68.
  5. ^ "Manufacturers struggling to draw the line". nippon.com (in Japanese). 2019-09-04. Retrieved 2022-11-25.
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