Banpresto

The company that turned claw-machine rewards into an easy way into figure collecting

At a glance

Status: Absorbed in 2019; the Banpresto brand remains active within Bandai Spirits.
Based in: Tokyo Japan.
Known for: Affordable arcade and lottery prize figures; Ichibansho; Masterlise; DXF; World Collectable Figure.
Good fit: collectors who want broad character coverage at lower prices; especially fans of Dragon Ball and One Piece.
Before buying: buy from a reputable retailer and inspect the packaging; counterfeits are common.
Research coverage: Solid

TL;DR

Now a brand under Bandai Spirits, Banpresto is the volume leader in prize figures, lower-cost figures originally offered through arcades and lotteries, anchored by Dragon Ball, One Piece, and Demon Slayer across lines like Ichibansho, Masterlise, DXF, and WCF.
Prize figures range from roughly $3-$33 USD, with Ichiban Kuji lottery top prizes reaching $20-$67+. The Ichibansho line in particular delivers sculpt detail and paint work that rival entry-level retail scales.
Counterfeits are common enough to make retailer reputation and packaging checks important.

From Arcade Developer to Prize King

Banpresto’s origin story is genuinely strange. The company was founded by Yasushi Matsuda as Hoei Sangyo on April 30, 1977, not as a toy company, but as a developer of coin-operated arcade games. The early operation was troubled enough that it rebranded as Coreland Technology in 1982, spending the next several years as a contract game developer for companies including Sega. By the late 1980s, Coreland was in severe financial difficulty, and Bandai swooped in with a majority acquisition in 1989, renaming the company Banpresto. The name itself is a deliberate portmanteau: “Ban” from Bandai, “Presto” from the magic term, expressing a corporate philosophy of quick, trend-responsive agility.

Banpresto’s entry into prize figures came in April 1990, when the company began supplying Japanese arcades with prizes for UFO catcher machines. The first wave featured Ultraman and Kamen Rider characters. The pivot from arcade game developer to arcade prize supplier was purely opportunistic. Banpresto already had deep relationships with game center operators, and prizes were a natural extension of that existing infrastructure. The prize figure business went on to eclipse everything else the company did.

Before the figure business took over, Banpresto produced the Super Robot Wars series of strategy role-playing games, crossovers that put giant robots from Gundam, Evangelion, Mazinger, and Macross into the same storyline. This matters because the games required Banpresto to build licensing relationships with an enormous number of rights holders at once. Those same relationships fed directly into the prize figure business: a company that could negotiate to put Eva and Gundam in the same video game had the legal infrastructure to put them in the same arcade showcase.

Volume at Every Claw Machine

No other manufacturer matches Banpresto's monthly output of new prize figures. The sheer volume is staggering, with dozens of new releases every month across a sprawling roster of product lines. The World Collectable Figure (WCF) line launched in 2009 with an audacious initial wave of 88 different Dragon Ball figures. Its palm-sized, big-headed designs encouraged set completion and impulse collecting. Beyond WCF, the lineup includes DXF and Maximatic for dynamic poses, Glitter & Glamours for stylized female characters, Grandista for extra-large statues, and the Masterlise series.

The Ichiban Kuji lottery system deserves special attention because it’s unusual in this space. Sold at convenience stores across Japan for roughly ¥680 ($4.50 USD) per ticket, every ticket wins something, with top prizes being figures that often rival standard scale figure quality. It’s a thrilling format for anime fans, and the lottery events have become community rituals. Collectors coordinate, trade, and chase specific prizes with an enthusiasm that transforms a merchandising mechanism into a social experience.

Banpresto’s licenses are anchored by major action-anime franchises. Dragon Ball and One Piece prize figures are among the most mass-produced anime figures on Earth, with an enormous cumulative output spanning decades of continuous production. Demon Slayer, My Hero Academia, Naruto, and whatever else is trending get the Banpresto treatment almost immediately. The company responds to popular franchises so quickly that your favorite character from the current hot anime probably already has a Banpresto figure before most premium manufacturers have even announced a prototype.

The $20 Entry Point

Banpresto is where many collectors start, and there is a lot of fun in that. You can build a sizable Dragon Ball or One Piece shelf for what a single 1/7 scale figure costs from Alter or Good Smile Company. Prize figures occupy a different design space than scales: seam lines, simplified details, and minor paint bleed are realities of the format. For what you pay, the trade-offs make sense.

Landmark releases worth knowing: the Ichibansho Monkey D. Luffy (Wano arc), proof the prize tier had leveled up; the DXF Roronoa Zoro, among the most widely owned prize figures anywhere. Most releases settle below retail within a few months through AmiAmi, Solaris Japan, and Mandarake. The exceptions are Ichiban Kuji top prizes and Super Master Stars Diorama releases, which carry real scarcity. Counterfeits are persistent: bootleggers produce fakes at similar price points. Buy from reputable retailers and learn to spot packaging differences.

Name Retired, Output Unchanged

Banpresto exists today as a brand name within Bandai Spirits (the corporate entity was dissolved in April 2019), but the output hasn’t slowed. Dozens of new products drop monthly across Ichibansho, Masterlise, WCF, and other sub-lines. Dragon Ball, One Piece, and Demon Slayer remain the pillars, with newer properties rotating in as anime seasons change.

The competitive picture has shifted as SEGA (now Sega Fave Corporation), Taito, and FuRyu have all improved their prize quality substantially. Banpresto’s advantages remain its IP portfolio, production volume, and the Ichiban Kuji distribution system. Banpresto is especially well suited to collectors who want broad character coverage at lower prices, and newer lines show more sculpt and paint detail than earlier prize releases.