The Beyblade Ballad

It wasn't just a cash grab

Confession. I had a knockoff Beyblade growing up. I always wanted the real thing, because maybe I thought they had the actual soul of a magical beast inside.

For anyone who isn’t understanding what I’m writing about today, this is about the hit 2000s anime and toy crossover known as Beyblade. If you were within the ages of 5-50 (more realistically 6-13 year-old boy) in the years 2000-2010, you have probably encountered it: an anime that was a-not-so-subtle way to sell plastic spinning tops to children.

Yes, it is a nostalgic trip into the not-so-near past, but I want to understand how this commercial artistic endeavour worked, when so many others failed.

Bey-ginnings

Let’s keep in mind that Beyblade did not invent either the spinning top or, perhaps more valuably, merchandise-driven anime. The 1990s and early 2000s were rife with such hits as Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Digimon, and later, Bakugan. While Pokémon is an entire Substack category in itself, Beyblade did follow in this tradition.

Each of these were able to escape the pure Japanese market and to varying successes, become valuable in their own right. The strategy was pretty obvious to any parent that had their kids literally beg for the toys:

1. Create a product with modular, collectible elements.

2. Develop an anime with world-building to justify constant new iterations.

3. Use the anime as a marketing funnel to make kids need the toys.

You’ll notice that the order of operations is toy first rather than story first. Perhaps this is the distinguishing feature that separates this so-called commercial-anime from artistic anime, which develop product lines long after they have a strong story.

Nonetheless, the challenge that Beyblade and their toymaking friends faced was how to maintain an engaging, emotionally rich story while also, selling a product? Many fail. Beyblade did not.

The concept of these toys originated from the traditional Japanese spinning tops known as Beigoma. These were proper old timey inventions back when people didn’t really have much better to entertain themselves. They were originally constructed from the high top spiral sea-shells found on the beaches, that people figured could be spun when wrapped with a cord and yanked.

By yanking and launching these shells, they’d spin for a while. People would subsequently see who could spin theirs the longest without collapsing. While my suspicions aren’t verified, I believe gambling may have been involved.

These sea-shells were over time modified to improve spin duration. First molten wax was added to adjust for weight distribution, then lead, and finally the beigoma were industrially manufactured from cast iron. While these toys captured the hearts and minds of the Japanese public for centuries, they did grow out of fashion as I guess other toys that did things other than spin emerged in the later 20th century.

Courtesy: Japan videos

So Beyblade was born from this dying tradition. Toymaker Takara Tomy thought they could spin this around and named their 1999 toy Beyblade after the Beigoma and Blade (after the various blades attached to the toy). This was not actually the first spinning toy to hit Japanese markets post-Beigoma. Takara Tomy had tried twice to launch games based on the tops called Battletop and Suge Goma.

Yet Beyblade featured a secret weapon. Okay, not really a secret since it’s in the name, but a weapon nonetheless.

Blades of Glory

The toy anime industrial complex wasn’t new at this point as we’d already mentioned. While Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh! were Japan’s success stories, they focused on trading cards. Beyblade wanted to be different.

Beyblade wanted to be a sport. Yes, that sentence sounds crazy to me too. Hear me out. The strategy of Beyblade was not to emulate either the Japanese model of trading card games, or the American model of figurines à la Transformers or GI Joe. The Japanese model had been building an economy reliant on rarity, deck-building, and constant expansions. This was a collector-based model, probably best encapsulated by the line “Gotta Catch ‘Em All”.

Meanwhile, the American model is dolls. Nothing wrong with that, but the model is basically, “If you like the show or movie, you can also hold the character in your own hands but smaller”.

Beyblade wasn’t interested in just pumping out new variants on its world, or just miniaturising their existing characters. They wanted war. Beyblades brought battles out of the imagination and into reality.

It was a physical competition.

Like any sport it featured real-world physics with every spin being unpredictable and dynamic. Clashes that determined winners and losers, with twists each time the tops met. Kids were actually able to improve on their spinning technique. Perhaps most crucial (at least to Tanaka Tomy) was the customisation. You could “engineer” a better athlete, with offensive and defensive upgrades available.

This fundamentally changed how kids engaged with toys. Beyblade took the modularity of trading card games and applied it to a physical toy. By mixing parts, changing the weight, balance, and attack patterns, you too were that Beyblade warrior.

This tied in nicely with the anime. The show highlighted how characters had emotional bonds to their blades, possibly telling kids to share that same attachment to their own toy. It further showed how its own characters challenged each other and tinkered with the design of the blades, something available for a low price in the real world.

Thus the Beyblade reigned supreme in playgrounds across the world in the early 2000’s. Cut fingers and wounded egos all caused by Tanaka Tomy trying to resurrect the spinning toy. It even won the apparently coveted “Toy of the Year” from British toy retailers in 2002. Yet what happened to this spinning top of success?

Beyond Bey-once: Beyblades Bey-forever

While I may have left my spinning days behind me, it appears Beyblade challenges are found globally. Tanaka Tomy was able to build off this initial burst of success to build more styles of blades!

Since my last foray in the Beyblade world, the franchise has already undergone multiple reboots. You have:

• Beyblade (2001-2003)

• Beyblade Metal Saga (2008-2012)

• Beyblade Burst (2016-2023)

• Beyblade X (2023-Present)

Each added new mechanics, including what I’m told are spring loaded tops that are damage-activated and explode (I’m not too sure what that means either), to even more precision blade designs. The discs stand to spin even longer thanks to the gears and other R&D-led technology.

The shows and toys have found ever-growing markets including massive growth in India thanks to Beyblade Metal Saga, and the USA. This strategy of tying competition to children’s anime has meant a wildly successful franchise, with lifetime total estimated sales being over $4.6 billion USD, placing it as slightly more valuable than Twilight and The Smurfs.

Yet the industry is changing. The anime-toy pipeline including Beyblade is facing new issues. The biggest problem are the kids. Put another way, children are much more prone to screen-based entertainment, even compared to ten years ago. Beyblade is all about physical competition; is anyone (present article readers excluded), going to watch lets-plays of Beyblades?

While the franchise has churned out over two decades of dominance at the spinning top, the future seems uncertain. Maybe it will follow the Poke-model of leaning heavily into nostalgia, and bringing back the more simple tops of the past. Or it might decide that if it can’t beat the digital monsters, it must join them and include AR or VR versions of the toys. Yet if the anime has taught us nothing else, it’s that Bladers never give up. Even when the odds are stacked against them they can rebuild and re-assemble. No matter what, you just have to Let It Rip!