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Gacha capsule toy machine sells Casio watch rings in Japan, and we try to get all of them

Oona McGee Oct 15, 2023
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Will the gacha gods smile kindly on our desire to own all of these cute miniature watches?

Gacha capsule toy machines can be a mixed bag when it comes to what’s inside them, with some containing octopus tentacle ear plugs and others containing handwritten notes from Japanese grandads.

While most of these machines satisfy our curiosity with just one turn of the dial, sometimes you can stumble on a machine so great that you want to feed all your coins into it, and that’s what happened to our reporter Haruka Takagi the other day, when she saw this at a local supermarket.

Haruka owns several Casio watches and is a big fan of them, so this was like a dream find for her. Made under the supervision of watch manufacturer Casio Computer Co., who makes the real-sized versions, these miniature models were designed to be worn on the finger, and there were five types to collect, priced at 400 yen (US$2.68) each.

▼ Most of these models cost between 1,500 and 5,000 yen for the full-size versions, so the chance to own all of the designs was a temptation too hard to resist.

She wasted no time in exchanging a couple of 1,000-yen bills into 100-yen coins, with high hopes of collecting all five of them. However, as is always the case with these machines, what you receive is all up to luck, so Haruka said a quick prayer to the gacha gods, asking them to descend to her right hand to bless her with what she so desired.

▼ The first spin is always exciting, so she fed her coins into the machine and slowly turned the handle clockwise.

The ring she wanted most was the F91W-1 model, which was the one featured on the display. Could this first spin make her dreams come true?

▼ Well, no. What came out was an analog watch, model MQ-24-7B2

It still looked incredibly cute on her finger, though, and while the hands don’t move — the time is set at a perpetual 10:08 — the transparent plastic plate over the dial is designed to look authentic, making it feel like a real watch. For 400 yen, this was well worth the money, so she was keen to try her luck again.

▼ What came out on her second turn of the dial was…

▼ The MQ-24-7B2…again!

Well, this was slightly disappointing. The possibility of receiving the same thing twice is one of the risks you take when using these machines, though, so she pushed her disappointment aside and hoped it would be a case of third time lucky.

▼ This time, something different popped out of the machine.

Peering inside, she could see the band was silver, and when she pried the capsule open, she discovered…

▼ …the DBC-611-1!

This is one of the unique Data Bank designs that includes a calculator, so she was thrilled with this result. For this miniature version, the calculator buttons are stickers, which she would affix once she got home, because now she couldn’t wait to spin the dial for a fourth time.

▼ This spin gave her the AQ-230GA-9.

If she’s being honest, this was the most disappointing design and the one she was least excited about getting. However, when she added it to her growing collection of watch rings, it actually looked pretty good.

She was now beginning to run out of fingers to put her prizes on, but she still hadn’t given up hopes of receiving the model she really wanted.

▼ Could her fifth spin turn out to be the best of all?

▼ Success!!! Her most coveted model, the F91W-1 was now in her hands.

▼ And it was soon on her finger, joined later by the real-life version back home.

▼ The diameter of each ring is approximately 18.7 millimetres, which was a little large for her, but she made it work nonetheless.

Buoyed by her success at now owning four of the five models in the collection, Haruka decided to tempt fate by going for one final spin on the machine.

▼ All she needed now was the AE-1200WH-1A, and her collection would be complete for 2,400 yen.

▼ What came out was the MQ-24-7B2…AGAIN!

She now owned three of that model, but she decided not to dwell on that too much, instead concentrating on the fact that her collection looked incredibly cute.

From a distance, and even up close, these watch rings looked like actual working watches, and worth far more than 400 yen.

▼ The four models

Now Haruka is tempted to purchase the full-sized watches these miniature models are based on, just so she can turn heads with a matching watch on her wrist and her finger. If you’re a fan of Casio watches like Haruka, this is one gacha machine you won’t regret spending your money on…unlike the one that serves up miniature food replicas, which made us regret our life choices.

Related: Casio Watch Ring Collection
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