What is this?…

Can anybody tell me what this is…

Those of you who are as old as me or maybe a little bit younger would probably remember what we called tikam in Malay. I wonder why it was thus called as the word in Malay means to throw or to stab. Here, we used to call it liew in Hokkien which means to draw as in “lucky draw”.

There would be folded pieces of paper stuck to a board and for 5 cents, we could pick one and pull it off the board. Sometimes there was a little piece of paper in it indicating the prize that we had won which could even be in the form of cash ranging up to as much as $5.00 or more.

In another version of this, there would be a number inside and we would have to check the corresponding number on another board on which there would be all kinds of prizes stuck to it. If we were lucky, we would win something nice but most of time, we had to leave empty-handed, totally disappointed and devastated.

Well, time has changed…and we do not get to see that anymore. However, there is something else these days that is, in essence, more or less the same thing. When Annie-Q came to town, her mum, the doting grandmother, gave Annie’s twins a bag of coins for them to try their luck at those kiddie traps that are all over the place here in Sibu and are very frequently strategically placed at the entrance of  most coffee shops to lure the children who will pester their poor parents for some coins to try their luck.

I have just found out myself that those vending machines are actually called Gashapon. Inside, you can see plastic egg-shaped capsules of all kind of colours and once you have put in the money, you can turn the knob and one of them will drop out. You will have to open the capsule to see what is inside – that is your prize.

Needless to say, I spent a fortune myself on those when my daughter was  small. I can remember that some of the prizes included those cheap electronic watches, rings and trinkets but out of all that she managed to win, I love these the most – ladybirds…

They come in a case like the one in the first photograph…

…and when you open it, the dangling legs of the insect will move, giving you the impression that the ladybird is alive….

I may have given a couple away, I’m not too sure, but I have kept these three in my display cabinet all these years. Perhaps one day, when those machines would have faded into oblivion, my daughter would have these to show her children and tell them about all the fun that she had when she was little…