gachapon dissection top

Don’t try this at home! And especially don’t try it at a gachapon store!

We’ve seen a lot of crazy things come out of gachapon capsule toy machines before–frolicking animals, water bottle sweater vests, and finger exercise equipment just to name a few—but have you ever stopped and wondered exactly how those plastic machines manage to count your yen and spit out their wonderful capsule merchandise?

Well wonder no longer! Daniel and Lincoln Markham—the father and son duo from the YouTube channel Whats Inside?—have done the dirty work for us. They traveled to Japan and used a saw to hack open a real gachapon machine, so we can see all the inner-workings for ourselves.

Ready to see how these plastic marvels work? Watch the full video here, or scroll down for highlights.

(Skip to 7:00 if you want to get to them opening it up right away.)

▼ Sparks are already flying as dad takes a saw to the gachapon machine.

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▼ Woah, wait… what? Where are all the magical gachapon elves?!

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▼ In case you ever wondered why you never got two capsules at once,
blame that long rubber tube over the hole. It’s all his fault.

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▼ Dad demonstrates how the machine is a one-way street: you can grab
capsules that come out, but you can’t shove your hand in for more.

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▼ After cutting off the side, we can see the coin mechanism. No electronics here,
just movable plastic dials for the gachapon overlords to adjust the price.

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▼ The gachapon machine lies in pieces,
but it served an honorable cause: science!

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I don’t know about you, but I actually had no idea how gachapon machines worked before watching this. I honestly thought they had batteries or were hooked up to some electrical source. The fact that they do everything with just some plastic switches and rubber bands blows my mind.

If you want to see the inside of more stuff, be sure to check out the rest of the What’s Inside? YouTube Channel.

And if that’s not exciting enough for you, perhaps you’d like to see the terrifying insides of plastic figures? Or the insides of… women’s shirts? (Uh, don’t click that one if you’re at work.)

Source: YouTube/What’s Inside? via Digg
Images: YouTube/What’s Inside?