Love hotel room keys are latest inspiration for Japanese capsule toys

Japanese capsule toys are a cornucopia of choice and variety. There seems to be no end to the objects that pop out from the thousands of vending machines found at stores, train stations, and tourist destinations.

What’s still often surprising, though, are the eyebrow-raising subject matters of certain toys.

Last year, for instance, we reported on the miniature vibrator capsule toys.

Slightly less risqué but just as awesome are these love hotel-inspired capsule toys. For a mere ¥300, you can get your own love hotel room key.

We have yet to spot these in the wild — might we find the actual vending machines at or near a love hotel?! — but the buzz online is amused and intrigued in equal measure.

The design is pretty retro. A lot of keys these days are card keys but older hotels would have these kinds of plastic rods attached to the key and engraved with the hotel name and key number. Regular hotels and onsen have them too, of course, but love hotel ones occupy a tacky world of their own.

The key rods (is that the right word in English?!) in this capsule toy series look authentic, from the crystal-like colors down to the hotel names. They even function as keychains, so you can attach them to your own keys and pretending you are going home to a love hotel every night.

In fact, they are so popular that they are into their third series, which is apparently the “nuanced edition.”

And a bit of searching revealed similar capsule toys series that seem to allow you to attach your own letters and thus customize the hotel name.