Another year, another assortment of weird cushions…

It’s certainly been a long, hard New Year’s season in Japan. Normally, this is the time that our reporters get to buy and open fukubukuro lucky bags, which often contain loads of limited edition merchandise. But for our writers P.K. Sanjun and Ahiruneko, it’s a painful ordeal.

This is because every year they are tasked with opening the fukubukuro sold by the novelty goods chain Village Vanguard, and every year they write scathing reviews about the uselessness of virtually everything inside. Despite this, the retailer seems to send them even more bags the following year, with a total of seven to ring in 2026.

Having gone through six of the bags, the results were admittedly not all bad, but having done this for so long, we figure they occasionally mix in good stuff to make the bad stuff sting more. There was only one bag left, however, and it was time for P.K. to open the Red Lucky Bag, which sold for 3,850 yen (US$24).

If these bags were a Super Sentai team, then logically, the red one would be the strongest. But it’s also among the cheapest of the group, so who’s to say? Well, let’s get this over with…

Every Village Vanguard bag color has a certain theme, and, as we can see, the theme for this one is magical girl anime aesthetic. Of course, P.K. is not the core demographic for magical girl anime, but if the items were even conceivably useful to him, he’d give this bag a passing grade.

This brings us to the centerpiece of this bag, a ribbon-shaped cushion. We’ve seen that cushions make frequent appearances in these bags, and even if they have horrendous designs, they can still be good for lying on.

However, due to its shape of a ribbon, this cushion didn’t look comfortable at all. You’d normally want to rest a weary body part on the center of a cushion, but this one was all bunched up there, leaving only the sides with reduced cushiony goodness. It was an unforgivable design flaw.

Then, there was a compact mirror, only made considerably less compact with a large, bulging plastic ribbon on the outside.

There was also a toothbrush with its bristles in the shape of a magical star. P.K. highly doubted this configuration bristles was approved by the Japan Dental Association to reduce plaque build-up.

It was accompanied by a pen with a heart at the end. However, it looked like more effort was put into making the decoration than the pen itself. It was hardly a writing instrument our reporter would rely on in a pinch.

The only saving graces of this bag were the hair iron and stickers, because P.K. could probably give those to his daughter.

These kinds of 3-D tactile stickers are all the rage now in Japan, so they were an especially good addition. Still, nearly 4,000 yen for some stickers and a hair iron was hardly a good deal.

It was just another swing and a miss from Village Vanguard, and as P.K. lamented the lack of a magical girl multitool or mustache trimmer, he handed down his verdict…

▼ Lucky Bag Verdict: Magically Disappointing

But in the sake of fairness and realizing that he clearly wasn’t the type of person Village Vanguard was marketing this bag to, he decided to call in fellow writer Ikuna Kamezawa, who just happened to be dressed like a magical girl, for a woman’s perspective.

▼ Ikuna: “Oh, it all looks nice.”

▼ Ikuna: “I’ll take all of it, if you don’t mind.”

▼ Ikuna: “I like the hair iron most of all, though.”

She even liked the impractical ribbon cushion and thought it would look nice in her room. It turns out that one writer’s trash truly is another’s treasure. Perhaps, we’ve been too hard on Village Vanguard’s lucky bags and projected our own biases onto them, when really, they were just sacks of harmlessly fun items intended to put smiles on our faces.

Could it be that, rather than constantly putting down this purveyor of playfulness, we should look inwards and understand why we feel the need to reject their offerings year after year?

No, it’s Village Vanguard who are wrong.

Photos ©SoraNews24
Bag design ©Chocolate
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