Posted on October 14, 2025

The MCU in Japan, part 3

If you think we’re good at merchandising the crap out of everything in the US, I suggest you take a tour of Japan someday. They’ve got it down to a science, almost literally in the case of movie merch. Every major movie theater there has a gift shop, and just about every major movie gets trinkets and tchochkes to sell. At least one company, named Froovie, specializes in producing these items, and they learned a long time ago which product categories create bangable bucks. That said, there’s still room for some customization and this is where the fun begins.

With very few exceptions, each MCU movie got its own wave of theater merch, entirely created and marketed in Japan. It’s likely that trade agreements are in place to limit sales to Japanese vendors only, which means that if you’re an MCU collector you have some challenges in store.

Below are pages from theatrical program books that show exactly what was released with each film. There are also some TV-related products that piggybacked onto the nearest movie. Of course, the volume rises and falls in accordance with expectations, and you will see that those expectations didn’t always track with reality.

Iron Man, 2008