The Trouble with Toy Dispensers

A toy dispenser in Toho Cinemas Shinjuku with lots of Toho kaiju goodness inside. Photo by Brett Homenick.

Earlier today, I briefly stopped by Toho Cinemas Shinjuku with the hope that I might find the toy dispenser I'd recently heard about that offers four different Toho kaiju, of which I was particularly interested in Sanda and Gaira from The War of the Gargantuas (1966). But, hey, Godzilla and Gigan aren't half bad, either. In any case, I was in luck because there it was!

Well, it didn't take me long to realize that I didn't have enough change on hand, so I went ahead and bought a small trinket (in this case, a Godzilla-themed magnet) in order to make more change. The cashier gave me exactly what I needed -- a 500-yen coin! Or so I thought.

While I had the exact amount of change I needed, I found out real quick that the machine didn't accept 500-yen coins. No way was I going to make change again when I already had a pocketful of it. Much like Jumpin' Jeff Farmer, I don't like it when things aren't going my way, so I metaphorically threw up my hands and gave up. Oh, well. Maybe next time.