What Is Ichiban Kuji, and How Do the Naruto Lotteries Work?
Ichiban Kuji, literally Number One Lottery, is Bandai Spirits' in-store prize draw, run in convenience stores and hobby shops across Japan. You buy a ticket at a fixed price, peel it to reveal a letter, and take home the prize assigned to that letter, A through the lower tiers of goods. Every ticket wins something; the skill of the format is that the top letters carry figures good enough to make people buy many tickets.
Naruto's recent runs show the system at full polish. The Legendary Sannin lottery, launched online in Japan on November 22, 2024 at ¥780 a ticket (about $5 at the time), offered MASTERLISE figures of Jiraiya, Orochimaru and Tsunade as prizes A to C, with smaller goods below. Its Last One prize, for whoever bought the set's final ticket, was a Naruto and Jiraiya figure recreating the cover of manga volume 42. Bandai returned with a Kazekage Rescue Mission set in June 2026 and a Hidan and Kakuzu arc set in October 2026, tickets at ¥790 (about $5 at the time).
The Last One mechanic is the collector's obsession: the best figure in the set cannot be drawn, only claimed by buying the last ticket in a store's allotment, which turns end-of-run tickets into a small spectator sport. A parallel Double Chance campaign lets ticket stubs enter a separate drawing for the same prize.
What MASTERLISE means
MASTERLISE is Bandai Spirits' flagship figure line for lottery and prize contexts: larger, sharper sculpts than standard prize figures, made to anchor a set's top letters. In Naruto runs the A to D letters are typically MASTERLISE figures of around 23 to 27 centimeters, with towels, posters, rubber charms and small figures filling the letters below. The hierarchy is printed on the set's poster, so a buyer knows the whole ladder before spending a yen.
Why they arrive in the West as imports
Almost none of this is sold at retail in the West. Naruto Ichiban Kuji figures reach American shelves through importers and resellers who buy out Japanese stock, which is why listings describe them by prize letter. A Prize A figure is a lottery rank before it is a product name, and knowing the letter tells a buyer the figure's place in its set, its size class and its scarcity in one character.