Answered from The 2 businesses AI can never make obsolete · My First Million · 2026-11-04
Shaan Puri traces the mystery-box habit to gacha, a Japanese toy capsule mechanic he says became so popular that Japan restricted it. Games such as Overwatch and FIFA copied it as loot boxes, and collector apps added real resale value to the prize. Puri says a friend in the toy business moved the same products from open shelves at Walmart and Target into mystery boxes and saw seven times the revenue, despite buyers getting less choice.
“And then they just took the same things and put it in a mystery box. And it was 7X the revenue.” Shaan Puri · at 21:29 — open in the transcript →
Source: our own transcription of the episode. The full conversation is on My First Million (2026-11-04). Read the whole episode summary →