Dragon Quest Slimes appear at Yoshinoya, and the restaurant is trying to make sure they go home with actual fans.

Considering that dragons make up only a small portion of the games’ collective bestiary, you could say that the primary appeal of Dragon Quest is the questing. So it’s fitting that tracking down the Yoshinoya Dragon Quest meal, and its included exclusive Slime figures, is a quest in and of itself.

Cool fan promotions like this are a dual-edged sword, in that they don’t only attract genuine fans looking for some extra fun with their food. In the modern world, where e-commerce makes reselling things easier than ever, they also attract swarms of scalpers who, if not countered, will swoop in, scoop up the entire stock of items, and then hawk them online at grossly inflated prices.

This is something that’s been aggravating fans for quite some time, and thankfully the businesses running such promotions have finally started taking stronger steps to at least reduce scalping opportunities. In the case of Yoshinoya’s Dragon Quest Walk Set gyudon/beef bowl combo meal, some Yoshinoya branches are limiting the number they serve each day, ensuring that the figures won’t be completely gone on Day 1, and also diminishing how lucrative a scalping run can be at any one location.

▼ “Today’s stock of Dragon Quest Walk Sets is sold out. Sales will resume at 10 a.m. tomorrow,” says this notice posted at a Tokyo Yoshinoya on the collaboration’s launch day.

Also, while the Dragon Quest sets were scheduled to go on sale July 2, either by design or because of other circumstances, some Yoshinoya branches didn’t start offering them until the following day, and such vagueness might also have made it harder for scalpers to know which restaurants were worth staking out.

Then there’s the strategy employed by the Yoshinoya branch where my quest for a Yoshinoya Slime figure took me.

This branch has self-order touchscreens for takeout orders on the outside of the restaurant, but when I swiped through the options, the Dragon Quest Walk Set was nowhere to be found. It wasn’t listed under “limited-time offers,” “recommended items,” or “beef bowl sets.”

There weren’t any Slime-illustration posters advertising the Dragon Quest tie-up either. However, there was a text-only notice posted near the entrance saying that this branch was limiting Dragon Quest Walk Set sales to eat-in customers.

▼ 店内飲食のみ = eat-in dining only

This was a bit of a bummer, since if you get the Dragon Quest Walk Set to-go, it comes in a Slime plastic takeout bag, and the Styrofoam takeout bowl has the Dragon Quest Walk logo on it. That said, those are both disposable items (if you carry a hot beef bowl home in a plastic bag, the smell of the meat will get soaked into the plastic, making it tough to reuse), and in addition to being more eco-friendly, limiting the Dragon Quest Walk Set to eat-in customers discourages scalpers. Yoshinoya tables/counters aren’t big enough for a single person to order several meals at a time, and if the staff were to see that someone still had plenty of untouched food while claiming to need another Dragon Quest set, it’d be a pretty clear sign they’re scalping and that it’s time to cut them off.

So what comes in the 932-yen (US$5.85) Dragon Quest Walk Set? Naturally there’s a beef bowl…

…a green salad with a packet of mayonnaise dressing…

…and, most importantly, a Yoshinoya Slime figure!

There are four possible figures you can get right now, and looking around the restaurant, absolutely no one was waiting until they got home to see which one they got, so let’s see what’s inside.

Hey, not bad! According to Yoshinoya, this little guy is called the “Tsuyudaku Slime,” with tsuyudaku being a word used to describe gyudon served with extra sauce. So in addition to being in Yoshinoya’s orange image color, this Slime is extra liquidy, and he has an overturned Yoshinoya bowl on his head.

Given their franchise mascot status and generally low threat level, it can be easy to forget that Slimes can be aggressive, and they’re carnivorous as well, as confirmed in the video promoting the Yoshinoya/Dragon Quest collaboration. As such, it’s advisable to keep an eye on your new Slime as you’re eating, at least until you can establish dominance in the relationship, so that it doesn’t steal your food.

▼ No…

▼ I said no!

▼ …OK, fine, we can share…

In terms of value, this is a pretty sweet deal. The figure isn’t particularly big, but it’s of very good quality. The Slime itself is made of nicely weighty and sturdy rubber, and the bowl on his head is smooth plastic. There aren’t any unsightly seams, bubbling, or other molding oddities, and the only markings are very subtle raised text reading “©Yoshinoya Co. Ltd.” And “©SQEX” (for Square Enix, Dragon Quest’s developer/publisher).

If you got a figure like this from a gacha/capsule toy machine, which usually cost 400 yen, it’d be above-average in terms of finish and aesthetics.

Considering that the Dragon Quest Walk Set is 932 yen, and that Yoshinoya charges 498 yen for an a la carte gyudon and 162 yen for a salad, that means that you’re essentially paying just 272 yen for the Slime figure, or arguably even less if you’re eating inside the restaurant, since Yoshinoya provides free water and, at some branches, complimentary green tea too. The Yoshinoya I ate at even had power plugs and charging cables, though that might be a special service due to how close the restaurant was to a Shinkansen station, meaning they probably have a lot of long-distance travelers among their customers.

▼ The little “Currently away from my seat” placards are a nice touch too if you need to get up to get a drink refill or use the bathroom.

▼ Professional eating-themed-food-guy tip: To subtly signal that you’re not a scalper, try to wear something that establishes your genuine love for fantasy RPGs.

▼ OK dude, since you ate some of the beef bowl…

▼ …you have to help write the article.

So yeah, it might take a little legwork, but tracking down the Yoshinoya Dragon Quest Walk Set is a worthwhile quest to experience (and the food itself is as tasty as always at Yoshinoya). Round 1 of the collaboration is set to run until July 15, and then a new batch of four figures will be available between July 16 and 29.

Photos ©SoraNews24
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