What Are Japanese Kuji & How Do They Work?

We’ve covered a few Kuji campaigns in the past, and it looks like they’re something we’re going to continue to deal with. Rather than explain what a Kuji campaign is (and how they work) every time we discuss them, I thought it might just be a bit easier to make one singular post explaining how they generally work so that we can just point people to that if they don’t already know. It’s getting a bit repetitive for us… and probably you too lol.

If you collect toys (you probably do if you’re reading this) you’ve probably come across the term “Kjui” or more commonly “Ichiban Kuji” at least once while searching eBay. If you’re like me you most likely took note of it as something to look up later on, filed it away in your brain as “some weird Japanese company”, and promptly forgot about it until the next time you seen it. You’ll be surprised to learn that you were right… kind of.

Ichiban Kuji is a brand of Kuji that’s distributed by Bandpresto, however the term Kuji is not exclusive to them. The term Kuji translates to “Lottery”, and there are several (mostly) Japanese companies that run Kuji campaigns such as Happy Kuji. Since Ichiban Kuji and Happy Kuji are the ones I’m most familiar with I’m going to stick to these two companies for the sake of this discussion, but most Kuji campaigns are run in a very similar fashion.

While Kuji may literally translate to lottery, it’s not exactly what we would consider a true lottery. Most of us in the Western World would assume that there is only one winner in a lottery drawling, because well… that’s how The Lottery works! In a Kuji campaign you are generally guaranteed to win something, with the key word here being something, because not all of the prizes are great.

So lets take a look at how campaign prizes are determined before we get into the general prize structure. A store participating in a Kuji campaign will receive a “master case” which contains all of the prizes for that promotion. Also contained in that case will be a display, and a sheet of lottery tickets. There is one ticket for each prize, or sometimes just prize level. So contrary to how we are used to shopping for figures, you cannon go in and just purchase the figure you want. While I did say that this isn’t what we would consider a “true lottery”, it is still very much a game of chance. Instead instead of purchasing the figure, you would need to purchase a kuji ticket. Once purchased the ticket would need to be opened to reveal which prize you won. Simple enough, unless there is a specific figure you want… then you’ll quickly turn into that old guy at the gas station who’s holding up the line while he buys $100 worth of lottery tickets.

Prize structure is rather basic once you understand it, with the exception of the “Last Prize”. For this I’m going to rely heavily on the Happy Kuji Be@rbrick campaigns since we’ve had a few master cases of these sets, but the basic structure is pretty much the same for almost all Kuji. Each case usually two high-end prizes (generally denoted as a Special Prize/Prize A and the Last Prize), few mid-level prizes, and quite a few standard level prizes. Some Kuji also contain what we would consider low-end prizes such as a pack of stickers, or a post card, but from a toy collector stand point I doubt anybody is going to be specifically importing a single post card.

With that being said, lets take a look at the typical breakdown for Bearbrick Happy Kujis to work as an example. Prize quantities can very from campaign to campaign, but these will work well to give a general idea of prize distributions. The standard Be@rbrick Kuji comes with 81 figures total per case as follows:

• 1x Special Prize; typically a 400% figures.
• 69x Regular Prizes; 20 characters numbered 1-20 with multiples of each.
• 10x Mid-level Prizes; typically five 2-packs of 100% figures labeled A-F (two of each set).
• 1x Last Prize; typically another 400% figure.

Each case comes with a sheet of 80 lottery tickets that correspond to each of the prizes. If you did the math, there are actually 81 figures per case. That’s where the Last Prize comes into play. The Last Prize is the only one that can’t be won with a Kuji ticket. It is instead given away once one of each prize has been given away; the SP Prize, one of each character, and one of each 2 pack. The Last Prize is given to whoever purchases the ticket that corresponds to the last figure to make a complete set. You wouldn’t personally have to have won a complete set, the store would just have to have given a full set away.

That’s a lot of words that probably don’t make much sense, so lets simplify it a bit. If you’re second in line for a fresh case, the person in front of you purchases 30 tickets, and by some miracle doesn’t pull a single duplicate prize, that would leave one prize left to win. If you then purchase a single ticket and it corresponds to the last figure, you would also receive the Last Prize as a bonus.

It is also worth noting that some Kuji will forgo the using the term Special Prize and simply use Prize A and Last Prize as their main lottery prizes. This can very from campaign to campaign, so finding a prize list can be helpful in determining the rarity of a figure.

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