p3p3ronHi MFC! I'm looking for help IDing whether this toy I recently got my hands on is official or not.
I collect a lot of PaRappa the Rapper merchandise and I was lucky enough to buy this seemingly super rare item.
You can see more footage and hear me talk about my find in this TikTok video I posted.
Found this cute handheld pachinko toy on Yahoo! JAPAN Auctions back in June. While PaRappa merch in general is on the rarer/pricier side these days, there's usually at least documentation like photos, auction listings, or old ad pics of items.
As far as I've been able to research, the above auction listing was the only mention of this toy on the internet (before I received it and started posting about it.)
More details collapsed below.
View spoilerIt features characters from the PaRappa anime View spoiler(which should have its own entry on here? Might be hard now considering most of the anime merch is already under the game classification...) that were not present in the games, such as Matt and Paula. There's even an indicator that this might be early merch, since the series antagonist Gaster is referred to on the center wheel by his mystery name "???"
I also believe that the front sticker featuring PJ, Katy, PaRappa and Sunny was not part of the toy's intended design and was rather added by some kid/previous owner. It covers part of the fun center wheel (and I've also seen that sticker in packs for sale before.)
I'm not completely convinced it's an official item though - while the copyright information printed on the front sticker decal is correct, it is a little strange that there is no raised plastic copyright info anywhere. Even my smaller PaRappa items have some sort of embossed info. It's even more strange that I haven't been able to find any more information about this item... I know collecting from this series is a bit niche, but I've never run into a situation like this before with no other information available.
TLDR; I'm currently asking the internet at large for any help identifying this Pachinko toy! I've posted on r/Parappa and r/HelpMeFind as well as TikTok and while I've gotten some traction I haven't found any more information. I've been searching in both English and Japanese, but I'm admittedly not the best at reading/sleuthing in Japanese.
Do you remember owning or seeing this toy ever? Have any leads or collector friends I could talk to?
If I can't get any more information I may consider emailing Rodney, the series character designer who I've met before - but I'd rather not bother him with something so silly that he may not even know anything about. Likely his work was licensed for this and he can't confirm whether it's real or not, but he does own quite a bit of stuff so who knows?
Anyway, thanks for any help in advance and I hope you at least found this interesting! Hopefully I'll be documenting more of my PaRappa collection into the database soon.
I collect a lot of PaRappa the Rapper merchandise and I was lucky enough to buy this seemingly super rare item.
You can see more footage and hear me talk about my find in this TikTok video I posted.
Found this cute handheld pachinko toy on Yahoo! JAPAN Auctions back in June. While PaRappa merch in general is on the rarer/pricier side these days, there's usually at least documentation like photos, auction listings, or old ad pics of items.
As far as I've been able to research, the above auction listing was the only mention of this toy on the internet (before I received it and started posting about it.)
More details collapsed below.
View spoilerIt features characters from the PaRappa anime View spoiler(which should have its own entry on here? Might be hard now considering most of the anime merch is already under the game classification...) that were not present in the games, such as Matt and Paula. There's even an indicator that this might be early merch, since the series antagonist Gaster is referred to on the center wheel by his mystery name "???"
I also believe that the front sticker featuring PJ, Katy, PaRappa and Sunny was not part of the toy's intended design and was rather added by some kid/previous owner. It covers part of the fun center wheel (and I've also seen that sticker in packs for sale before.)
I'm not completely convinced it's an official item though - while the copyright information printed on the front sticker decal is correct, it is a little strange that there is no raised plastic copyright info anywhere. Even my smaller PaRappa items have some sort of embossed info. It's even more strange that I haven't been able to find any more information about this item... I know collecting from this series is a bit niche, but I've never run into a situation like this before with no other information available.
TLDR; I'm currently asking the internet at large for any help identifying this Pachinko toy! I've posted on r/Parappa and r/HelpMeFind as well as TikTok and while I've gotten some traction I haven't found any more information. I've been searching in both English and Japanese, but I'm admittedly not the best at reading/sleuthing in Japanese.
Do you remember owning or seeing this toy ever? Have any leads or collector friends I could talk to?
If I can't get any more information I may consider emailing Rodney, the series character designer who I've met before - but I'd rather not bother him with something so silly that he may not even know anything about. Likely his work was licensed for this and he can't confirm whether it's real or not, but he does own quite a bit of stuff so who knows?
Anyway, thanks for any help in advance and I hope you at least found this interesting! Hopefully I'll be documenting more of my PaRappa collection into the database soon.
Comments7
Thanks so much! I already found out some more info thanks to a user on here so I hope to learn more backstory too <3
aucview.aucfan....Oh wow this alone is amazing though! I can see from the pic that it has the same sticker on the front (that I thought maybe was placed erroneously) and it looks like it was packed with a backing card. Already have more info than I had before, thanks for finding this!
aucview.aucfan....