Trends in Japan - CScout Japan Blog

Osaifu Saver personal finance RPG game from Takara Tomy

Written by: Michael Keferl on December 8, 2008 at 4:58 pm | In DIGITAL LIFE | 3 Comments

So, unless you’re as smart as Peter Schiff, the world economy is in shambles and you’re thinking about every penny you spend. On the other hand, if you ARE as smart as Peter you get a lot of enjoyment out of maximizing your finances while the suckers are spending like crazy.

Enter Osaifu Saver (wallet saver) from Takara tomy, the personal finance RPG that makes every withdrawal, deposit, and expense a notable event.

osaifu rpg takara tomy 1

Osaifu Saver uses a stylus for inputting every financial transaction you make, and assigns it to categories (utilities, food, love life, etc) to fit within a budget that you sent at the beginning. The action moves according to your own preferences: Stay within your budget and good things happen, but go over and be prepared for the worse!

osaifu rpg takara tomy 2

With a range of characters and storylines, the aim of the device is to keep you entertained while encouraging you to save money, a trend not lost on the penny pinchers around here. it also opens up with a compartment that saves your receipts.

Of course, it’s necessary to budget the $45 for the device first, but it takes money to save money, right?

Tags: Money, Piggy Banks, RPGs
Category: DIGITAL LIFE
Other categories: MARKETING IDEAS, LIFESTYLE / FASHION, PRODUCT INNOVATIONS

Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution No Derivatives license

Save ¥100,000 with voice recorded encouragement

Written by: Rebecca Milner on November 21, 2008 at 3:58 am | In DIGITAL LIFE, LIFESTYLE / FASHION | No Comments

In our coverage of the latest generation of interactive digital piggy banks we noted that despite their often cartoon-ish appearance, these banks were for adults. Here is additional proof: the new Voice Memory Bank from Toy Box is designed to help you save ¥100,000.

That is not small change. That’s about $1,000 (give or take the fluctuating exchange rate), or about what a young-ish couple might need for a weekend at a hotspring resort, a package trip to Okinawa, or matching Louis Vuitton key holders. It is also a sum that might be worth investing, but the popularity of these banks just continues to confirm the stereotypical Japanese tendency towards mattress-style saving.

The key sales point of the Voice Memory Bank is that you (or your significant other, as the press material notes) can record an encouraging (nagging?) message that gets replayed with every ¥500 coin deposit. The bank itself requires an investment of ¥1,995 (about $20).

In other savings related news—and I don’t know how we missed this—a coalition of toy bank manufacturers, including Takara Tomy, Bandai, Banpresto, and Toybox, declared October 10th to be “savings day” (take that birthday of the Republic of China).