Radio Eva Fukubukuro

During the New Year’s holiday season, nearly every shop or brand offers Fukubukuro these days. Literally, translated as Lucky Bags, Fukubukuro are packs filled with random items but often of more value. This year, I ordered myself a bag from the Radio Eva store. We unbox the contents within.

Some less reputable shops may take the chance to pull a fast one on buyers. But it is usually tradition for bigger brands to give back to loyal customers to win over their continual support and perhaps clear out on some of their old stock.

We saw some really awesome fukubukoro by brands like LIZ LISA and CECIL McBEE. In the case of LIZ LISA, they offered lovely luggage bags for 10,000 yen, which also happened to contain a bunch of random clothing worth well over the cost. Other brands like Baby, The Stars Shine Bright chose to sell fixed fukubukuro sets, which offered an entire change of clothes from head to toe, for the price of a single dress.

While a fan of what Radio Eva has done with the Evangelion franchise, the limited edition nature and resultant prices of their clothing doesn’t fare well with my wallet. Seeing reports of really great hauls from the previous year’s goodie bags, inspired me to give this year’s Radio Eva Fukubukuro (RADIO EVA 限定福袋) a try.

The loot.

This year’s Radio Eva Fukubukuro was available for 10,000 yen a bag. I’ll be running through the items inside, while stating their actual cost at the shop and some thoughts.

For starters, all of the items were shipped to me in a large NERV EVERYDAY BAG (Black). 5,040 yen.

It was good that I got the black one here, since they come in a number of other less desirable colors too.

Random small items.

Here we have a bunch of random flyers, pin badges, stickers and an empty packing for a 3 pack of plain tees. Strangely though, the t-shirt pack was empty and I could find no instructions. Did they forget to include my tees? Am I supposed to claim them somehow? Did someone on the shipping end swipe them? Or did they have an extra wrapper? I will never know.

Most of the stuff here have little use or purpose. The only thing I managed to find an actual price for was this Eva Keychain Set 4. 1,000 yen.

Logo tote.

Next, another bag. ROOTOTE (Ivory x Black). 3,465 yen. Though it screams otaku pretty loudly and I will have less use for this tote than the previous.

Hoodie.

I can think of at least one person who would like this Uniform NERV 003 Hoodie. 7,665 yen. It’s one of safer options in the bag, since it solely features the new NERV logo from the Evangelion movie remake. Probably not going to wear it in Singapore though or best kept for the office.

First tee.

RADIO EVA SPECIAL FLCL T-Shirt 01. 3,675 yen. The first of 5 t-shirts inside. This should be one of the more wearable designs with its plain colors. It’s also the cheapest out of the lot being a fairly new, still in stock design. Not so sure about the anime characters. But it’s not very apparent from far.

Wearable tee.

The Baseball-T(黒02). 5,040 yen, is easily the most wearable tee out of the lot with its varsity theme. There’s a huge “02″ in bold behind though. But only those in the loop would get the reference.

Unwearable tee.

Yet another standard t-shirt. This one is a pretty gaudy limited edition cross over featuring a Japanese MMA fighter called Sauraba Kazushi. PREMIUM14 Sauraba Kazushi. 5,040 yen.

Couple generic looking tees.

Here’s a pack of one long and one short sleeved shirts with the same Unit 01 logo as on the tote. RADIO EVA 023 and RADIO EVA 044. 5,985 and 8,190 yen respectively

Watch. In Mari colors.

There was already quite a bit of stuff inside. But the shop promised a possible accessory with each fukubukuro. Mine contained the DAYKEEPER (RELAX PLUS PLUGSUITS EDITION) マリモデル. 5,040 yen. It’s a watch in Mari Illustrious pink. It also comes with purple, blue, red as well as white and black versions (which are sold out). Would have loved the blue or red ones, but this is still much better than the purple. The watch is pictured here sitting on a set of Large-sized Handkerchief (monogram). 3,465 yen.

Finally, there’s a pretty cool bonus plastic calendar poster, which I can put no price to.

Calendar poster.

All in all, the items unboxed have a combined value of 53,605 yen (SGD$900). A pretty good value for the 10,000 yen the bag cost. From other unboxings, found that others seemed more lucky in their selection of items, especially when it came to tees but that might be a matter of personal taste. Few others got the neat watch though. Everyone else received items of a combined value of 55,000 yen or higher, with some getting bags worth as much as 70,000 yen (mostly due to getting a pair of shoes for their accessory).

Overall, the fukubukuro was definitely worth it, even just considering the few items that I would wear. You can be sure I’ll be a grabbing a bag next year too as well as more bags from other favored brands.