An ID photo of Masamitsu Tsumori inside a capsule.
Drop in ¥300 JPY (about $2 USD), turn the capsule-toy crank, and out comes an ID-photo headshot of a man you've never met. The series, Random Strangers' ID Photos, has caught on with younger buyers, propelled by social-media buzz. With 500 volunteer portraits in rotation, the maker says sales have reached about 500,000, raising a stranger (no pun intended) question: why pay to own a random face, and why sign up to become one?
A 300-Yen Icebreaker
In early February, at Village Vanguard's Shibuya flagship in Tokyo, one of the outlets with a vending machine for the capsules, a group of four friends fed in their coins, popped one open, and burst out laughing.
One buyer, a male vocational-school student, slipped the photo into his smartphone case. "People go, 'What's that?' 'Are you a fan of this guy or something?'" he said. "It's a great conversation starter, and it's funny to think I might actually run into this guy somewhere in town."
Himari Katano, the deputy manager who oversees the capsule-toy corner at the store, said the draw isn't the standard collector's impulse. Most capsule toys, she explained, are bought by people trying to pull a specific item or to complete a full set. "This is different," she said.
She sees plenty of customers buying them in groups, chatting as they do it. That, she said, suggests the fun isn't in what you win. It's in who you're with when you turn the handle — more of a communication tool than a hunt for a prize.
Random Beginnings
The product began back in 2022, when Hiroki Terai, president of Takibi Factory, a Tokyo maker of novelty goods, collected ID photos from 10 acquaintances and put the first capsules on sale. Today, the company has installed vending machines at about 200 locations nationwide.
The idea, Terai said, came by accident. A cartoonist friend, Big Jo, gave him an ID photo, and he tried slipping it into an empty capsule for safekeeping. "It fit perfectly," he said, and the snug match became the spark for a product.
About 90% of the portraits come from Terai's own circle — friends and friends-of-friends — with the remaining 10% submitted through the official website. The mix skews about two men for every one woman. Among men, many are middle-aged or older. Most of the women are in their 30s and 40s.
To prevent impersonation, Takibi Factory verifies in person or via online interviews that each submission is the applicant's own photo. Even so, Terai said it can get tricky. "One person brought a photo from half a century ago," he said. "Confirming it was them was a real struggle."
Like Being on Live TV
Masamitsu Tsumori, a 51-year-old dentist in Chiba Prefecture, is one of the volunteers who submitted a photo. He compares it to a small, harmless brush with fame. "It's like wanting to show up in a live broadcast during a typhoon, standing behind the reporter and flashing a peace sign," he said with a laugh.
When the Random Stranger toy was featured on a TV program, he said a capsule produced his own photo. "They teased me on air," he said. "Honestly, I was happy about it."
Photos are still coming in, and more than 200 are now waiting to be turned into capsules. Terai said he warns applicants that the pictures could be resold online. Most shrug it off. "They say, 'That sounds fun,' and they're surprisingly positive," he said with a wry smile. "But I can't say I fully understand that mindset."
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(Read the article in Japanese.)
Author: The Sankei Shimbun
