All we knew was that the bag contained Dragon Ball anime figures, and that was all we needed to know.

There’s a tightrope that stores in Japan have to walk when selling their New Year’s lucky bags/fukubukuro. The hook for these start-of-the-year promotions is that you don’t know what treasures are actually inside the bag until after you pay for and open it, but an overly vague promise, like “this bag contains stuff,” isn’t going to get many people reaching for their wallets.

But second-hand anime store Lashinbang got the balance just right with five special words on one of the chain’s fukubukuro: “collection of Dragon Ball figures,” shown in the section circled here in red.

Lashinbang didn’t say how many figures would be in the bag, or which characters from the decades’ worth of anime episodes and manga chapters would be represented. But “collection of Dragon Ball figures” is one of the most compelling sales pitches we’ve ever heard, and was more than enough to convince us to fork over 3,300 yen (US$31) for the fukubukuro.

Our Japanese-language reporter Great Muromahi did the unbagging honors, and the first figure he pulled out was…

…none other than series star Son Goku himself!

Specifically, this is the Blood of Saiyans Special VI-series figure of Goku in his red-haired Super Saiyan God mode, which the martial artist first achieved in the Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods theatrical feature.

Having scored an awesome Goku right from the start, we were already pretty satisfied. As a matter of fact, the Lashinbang probably even positioned Goku to be at the top of the bag so that we wouldn’t be disappointed if the rest of the figures are of minor supporting charaters, right?

But when we went back into the bag…

…the next character to make an appearance was also a major player in the Dragon Ball saga: Goku’s son Gohan!

This Gohan is part of the Chosenshi Retsuden (“Tales of Super Fighters”) figure series, and comes with a special stand so he can execute a perpetual flying kick.

There was one more figure in the bag, though, and our final figure was…

… the Chosenshi Retsuden Vegeta, yet another of the most important pugilists in the series!

A lot of times, Japanese stores sell fukubukuro not just as a way to pass on some fun savings to customers, but also as a way to get rid of junk they’ve been unable to sell through ordinary means. But this time, our lucky bag was truly lucky, with three awesome figures that any Dragon Ball fan would love to have.

Of course, we can’t help wondering if our extremely good fortune means that somewhere out there there’s a less-lucky Lashinbang shopper who ended up with a dud sack of three Yamcha figures, but we can safely say we got our wish with this lucky bag.

Photos ©SoraNews24
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