
Just not in time for Mountain Day.
There’s an expression in Japanese that goes “the mountain has moved” (yama ga ugoita) which means that a seemingly impossible change has occurred. It’s based on the universal rule that mountains generally don’t move much, but what if they could? I think it would go a little… something… like this!
▼ Whoa! Look at that sucker go!
What you just witnessed was a The Mountain Has Moved capsule toy by Tama Kyu. Taking a figurative expression to its absurd conclusion, this line of toys lets you move some of the world’s most famous peaks whenever and wherever you want.
Five mountains from five countries are represented: Mt. Everest, Mt. Etna, Diamond Head, Mt. Olympus, and two types of Mt. Fuji, available in red and blue. Our writer Saya Togashi tried her luck with a turn of the capsule machine and got a Mt. Olympus.
She thought it was a pretty good draw, what with all the gods and discuses and whatnot, until she was informed that it wasn’t the Greek one, but the one on Mars formally known as Olympus Mons.
That was still cool though, what with all the Matt Damons and rovers and whatnot. Anyway, these toys utilize state-of-the-art toy car technology to make the impossible possible.
All you need to do it pull it back…
…and release. Can’t you just feel the monumental change occurring?
Still, looking at the paper insert, Saya sighed and thought about how cool it’d be to have a Mt. Fuji too. So she took another crack at the machine. To her surprise she got…
▼ …another Olympus
Saya was a rather experienced capsule toy turner, and getting the same thing twice in a row is pretty rare. She asked the clerk who agreed that it usually took four or five tries to get a duplicate, and that she should try again.
So she put in another 300 yen (US$2.72), focused her mind, and gave the knob another go-around. A plastic ball popped out which Saya cracked open to reveal…
▼ …another Olympus?!
Now the proud owner of three Martian volcanoes, Saya thought they were beginning to look like a plate of cookies.
However, if you ran them all at once you could get a glimpse of what it might really look like when Mars attacks.
▼ Pewwwwwww!
Once again, we’ve found that you can never only take one turn of a capsule machine, but despite her bad luck on this day, she didn’t feel bad about her movable mountains. After all it was hardly the strangest thing Tama Kyu has put out, and had great cat-freak-out potential.
However, if they came out with The Mountain Dew Has Moved toys, then we’d be really onto something!
Photos: ©SoraNews24
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[ Read in Japanese ]












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