Company: Bandai
Release date: 2023
Size: +/- 3cm
Main distribution: Japan (Gashapon machines)
These are Gashapon charms of miniatures of Milo, the malt chocolate drink from Australia.
Milo is a chocolate-flavoured malted powder product produced by Nestlé. You mix it with milk, hot water, or both to produce a chocolate drink. It’s originally developed in Australia by Thomas Mayne in 1934. It’s commonly sold as a powder in a green can, and often depicts sporting activities. Later it also got developed into snack bars and breakfast cereal.
This gashapon set depicts various miniature versions of the malted powder Milo throughout the years. There’s 5 keychains to collect.
I got 1/5.
The keychains come in green transparent capsules so you can see immediately which one you got without opening it. The keychains are packaged in plastic.
They come with a full colour leaflet depicting the full set as well.
Milo (1973)
Milo (1973) depicts the vintage can with the basic green label, the old Nestlé logo and the old Milo logo. The lid is golden. The charm is on a ball chain, and stuck to the lid. On the chain is also a little green Milo cup.
The branding is on the label of the can, where in real life the product details would be. It reads © 2023 Nestlé Group B. CHINA the 4 dots of Bandai 2702928.
When I was in Australia I quickly discovered Milo and enjoyed it, which is odd as I normally don’t like malted chocolate. Their milk and white chocolate cereal was my favourite and I’m still sad I can’t get this over here. I have found a shop that sells the drink though, so I can still get some form of Milo.
So when I saw this Gashapon set I got kind of nostalgic. Miniature food is also quite fun to have and a great prop, but mostly I really liked the little green cup. Considering every single one had the cup, I could not lose really, although I preferred a can over the pouch. Because the gashapon are Japanese, the branding on them is also Japanese, so if I could choose I would go for the 1973 one, as it has the least Japanese on it. And lucky me got exactly that one.
I couldn’t tell the scale as it was a digital machine with no examples on display, but I think this scales nicely with my figures (sometimes keychains can be a bit on the large size) so I’m happy with that.
If you like miniature food, or Milo, you’ll like this set.
If you prefer non food figurines, you’ll give this one a miss.
Got any more details / information you think I should add? Or did I get something wrong? Do you own these charms? Do you agree or disagree with my findings? Let me know in the comments below!