Lev Haiba, Haikyuu!!, and the Choco Egg Tradition

Lev Haiba from Haikyuu!! — Furuta Choco Egg Chibi Figure

Lev Haiba in Chibi Form

This small PVC figure captures Lev Haiba — Nekoma High School’s middle blocker — in a deformed, chibi-proportioned style. At around 4.5 cm tall on its black circular display base, the figure shows Lev in Nekoma’s red jersey with the number 11, one arm extended forward in a pose that evokes a volleyball play. His silver-grey hair and green eyes, markers of his half-Russian, half-Japanese heritage in the story, are reproduced even at this compact scale.

Lev Haiba is a supporting character in Haikyuu!!, the high school volleyball manga by Haruichi Furudate that ran in Weekly Shonen Jump from February 2012 to July 2020 and was collected into 45 volumes. The anime adaptation, produced by Production I.G, launched in April 2014 and ran through four seasons, concluding with a two-part theatrical film in 2024. Lev plays for Nekoma, a team led by Coach Nekomata and long established as the rival of the protagonist’s school. At 194.3 cm within the story, he is among the tallest players in the cast — a detail that gives his chibi incarnation, all oversized head and rounded proportions, its particular appeal. He is known for being simultaneously formidable on the court and comedically unpolished off it, a combination that has earned him a devoted following among fans inside Japan and well beyond.

The Shokugan Format and Furuta’s Choco Egg

This figure comes from the shokugan category — a type of Japanese product that pairs a small food item with a collectible toy. Because shokugan items are classified as food under Japanese law, they are distributed through supermarkets, convenience stores, and candy shops rather than specialist hobby retailers, which gives the format a reach and a casual accessibility that purpose-built collectibles do not share.

Furuta Confectionery, an Osaka-based sweets company, launched its Choco Egg line in 1999 with a Japanese wildlife series and has since applied the format to a range of anime and manga properties, Haikyuu!! among them. The product is an egg-shaped chocolate shell that contains a small capsule holding the figure inside. The packaging gives no indication of which character is enclosed — the Choco Egg is a blind-box collectible in which the character is revealed only after opening. Completing a full set requires buying multiples and hoping for a good draw, or trading duplicates with other collectors, a dynamic that has been central to the product’s appeal since its launch.

Haikyuu!!’s International Following and Lev’s Place in It

Haikyuu!! has established a substantial fan base outside Japan, with audiences in North America, Europe, and Southeast Asia drawn to its detailed portrayal of competitive volleyball and its large cast of distinct characters. Lev Haiba — tall, visually distinctive, and belonging to one of the manga’s most popular rival teams — holds genuine recognition in those markets. The Choco Egg line is sold through ordinary domestic Japanese grocery channels and is not distributed through overseas retail networks, which reflects its design as a product for the Japanese market rather than an internationally targeted merchandise line. The specific series and release year for this figure are not confirmed in available sources; the Haikyuu!! Choco Egg releases span broadly from 2014 into the early 2020s.