#torikaraballmon

Poll winner art!

Next poll will be up soon for voting :>

I bought these wonderful Digimon models from @capsulecustoms and finally got around to painting them.

DigiMonday - TORIKARABALLMON

(Baby 2 Level/No Attribute/Food Type)

I didn't think there'd by much to say about this deep-fried doofus (affectionate.) Its design seemed to be based around the idea of creature-ifying a piece of fried chicken (possibly specifically Karaage, a type of marinated, deep-fried chicken that's popular in Japan) by giving it the feet, wings, comb and beak (or at least beak-like duck lips) of a living Chicken.

(Karaage Chicken, image source here.)

It was when I turned to Wikimon to look into the origin of its name that things became a bit more complicated: TorikaraBallmon is based not on the general concept of fried chicken but on a specific type of spicy fried chicken balls sold by Lotteria, a fast-food chain with branches across eastern Asia. It turns out that between 2001-2002 select Loteria restaurants in Japan hosted an official Digimon collaboration in which customers could pick up an exclusive booster pack of cards for the Digimon Hyper Colosseum card game (a now defunct trading card game pre-dating the modern Digimon TCG) featuring various Digimon enjoying Loteria products. Most of these cards featured established Digimon that appear in the then-ongoing Digimon Tamers and Digimon Frontier Anime (particular favourites of mine include a Doggymon absolutely going to town on a hotdog, a Kiwimon sharing a drink with its ChibiKiwimon and a Myotismon looking about as elegant as one can look while holding a milkshake), but three of them featured brand new fast-food-themed 'Mons that debuted as part of the collaboration: the hamburger-themed Burgermon, Burgermon's less-than-creatively-named evolved form Burgermon Adult and EpiBurgermon, which was themed around a unique shrimp-based burger sold only at Lotteria stores. And featured on Burgermon's card, seemingly invoking the idea of a side of chicken to go with a burger, was the first ever appearance of our dear little battered-fried birb ball:

TorikageBallmon wouldn't be be formerly named until its Anime debut in episode 19 of Digimon Frontier, which heavily featured both it and Burgermon Adult in what I assume must have been a tie-in to the then-ongoing Loterria collaboration. Somewhat surprisingly given its promotional origins Torikageballmon has stuck around long after the tie-in it debuted in has ended; it cameoed in numerous later Digimon anime and manga series, could be obtained and raised in the Digimon D-Spirit VPet line, played a semi-prominent supporting role alongside Burgermon in episode 39 of the 2020 Digimon Adventure remake and even got a card of its own in the Digimon TCG in 2022 (this time with a cameo from a Burgermon in the background. How the burger-covered tables have turned...)