gacha in fanmerch
i bought physical objects again. new phone quality is really nice compared to my shitass flip phone keitai.
my order was primarily for the recent 30MS amana figure, but i haven't got the tools to assemble it yet. here's amana and genbu from the christmas livestream instead. i always love it when my faves get new merch in the same artstyle!!! i ordered these resold on mercari since they were gacha-only on asobi store, despite being a pre-order item.
anyway, gacha in official merch is one thing, but i wanted to talk again about why i think gacha in fanmerch is kinda senseless.
to begin with, the gacha model in japan basically exists to sell more products. you don't know which character you're getting, so you want to buy extra blind bags or even the full set to split with friends. this works because trading and reselling are a major part of gacha merchandise. and trading really only works because the merch is centered around a local area, i.e. the only reason japanese fans do trade gacha products so much is that japan is a tiny place with millions of people who all buy products and can easily swap them with each other through twitter and such.
it's not limited to japan though. even in new zealand, you'll find facebook groups for popmart figures and sylvanian family blind bags where people trade the characters that they didn't want for the ones they do. the most important thing is just density of consumers, i suppose.
but since gacha fanmerch is produced in small quantities and then primarily just sold online, it feels much harder in comparison to find someone who can swap or resell the specific character you want to you. these products aren't being manufactured in the thousands or even hundreds, they're probably made in the dozens at most. and reselling fanmerch is already kinda awkward online when the creators of said merch are like, right there in the same fanspace watching you LOL. basically, i think that the trading culture which is essential to gacha doesn't really exist in this instance.
i get the appeal in randomized and mystery merch though, so i think a good middle ground is to offer gacha items at a cheaper price and also let people pick their own at a higher cost. i don't mind spending $5 extra to make sure i'm getting the one i want. it's still a hell of a lot cheaper than whatever the shipping fees would be in reselling and receiving items internationally later on.