Child suffers brain damage from gachapon

I honestly don’t know how I feel about this one. The Kagoshima District Court ruled today that Namco Bandai must pay 26 million yen ($250,000) to a child who suffered brain damage from getting part of a gachapon capsule stuck in his throat.

Now if you’re not familiar with gachapon, remember when you were a kid, and you asked your mom for a quarter to buy one of those toys in those little clear top, colored bottom plastic containers. gachapon are basically the same thing, just filled with much cooler prizes like highly detailed anime and game characters. They account for about 310 million annually in Japan.

The courts ruling was based on the expectation that a kid under three will pay with the capsule after the prize was removed. The court wants Bandai to make the capsules bigger so they wont fit in a child’s mouth, as well as to change the shape and add holes to prevent suffocation.

For starters, a little child will find anything to cause mischief with. Even if Bandai changes their gachapon size, this wont be the last time a child chokes on something foreign. At two years old, I would be more concerned with the parents watching their children rather than trying an impossible task like making everything childproof. But that’s just me. Via ANN

Neko loves Gachapon.