Hey guys!
So, Ive been thinking really hard about the whole burst mechanic lately, and I wanted to share a theory with you about it, and see what your thoughts are on it.

So, as we all know, Beyblade is coming back again. This is exciting news for all of us old fans, as well as another series to introduce newcomers to. The new series is called, Beyblade Burst, and features the same old idea of launching spinning tops at high velocity at each other and watching them collide until one (or both) run(s) out of steam, or is knocked out of the arena, but it also carries a new feature: Burst.

This new feature is when a Beyblade litreally bursts into it's smaller components from being hit a certain way, or too hard, or something (not entirely familiar with how it works just yet seeing as I haven't PLAYED with the Burst toys, just seen them). Now, I found this to be really interesting. Anime aside, because we all know the anime is pretty much just used as a marketing tool to push the toy line, I started to wonder why the Burst mechanic was added. For freshness? To try and breathe life back into an older game? Well...yeah...but, why would they have to? The older fanbase would most likely give any new incarnaton of Beyblade a chance. The newer fans wouldnt really have anything to compare it to. Why the added Burst mechanic?

To draw, and try to keep attention.

It's no secret that people's attention spans are becoming shorter and shorter, and tangible forms of entertainment are becoming less and less prevalent. Digital entertainment is taking precedent. With such easy access to the Internet and media, spending money on toys and actually playing with them is becoming less and less of a popular action. So how do we make this already fast-paced, non-violent, but action-filled game more exciting to hold people's interest for longer, or even bring them into checking it out? By making things explode! It's no secret that by human nature, we love destruction and action. We love high-speed, fast-paced, high velocity, destruction. This game already had a lot of those elements, but was missing the explosive aspect it has now (no pun intended). And as funny as it is, due to a recent post I read, I think my theory is even more plausible.

Hasbro Beyblades seem to Burst easier/more often. A study was conducted by several members of this board and that was found. Now, statistically speaking, us westerners, who are getting the Hasbro releases, are actually more prone to having shorter attention spans. Studies have shown that American children in general have awful attention spans, and it's only getting worse. Did Hasbro intentionally make their 'blades burst more frequently on purpose because of this reason? To keep the western children more involved, and attentive? Is my theory plausible? Is it all BS? Let me know what you think!

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Interesting theory.

The main reason was to fix the teeth issue, and they only burst more with TT launchers. With the packaged hasbro launcher, they burst less, because in order to produce a burst, both beys need to be in high velocity to start producing hits. If enough is given when they are spinning fast, then some clutch finishes can happen in the end. But mainly you need high speed to produce a burst. So it really only happens with the TT lauchers that they weren't intend anyone to use the beys with, if you play with hasbro launchers it works fine. Which makes me wonder how/if a stronger launcher will release and work well.

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My YT Channel I don't upload regularly.

I definitely agree on your theory. The idea of Beys Bursting was a brilliant idea. It is true that children are having shorter attention spans as I have seen that, especially in my brother. Just throwing this out: He decided to play Beyblade Burst with me a few days ago. He would just rage quit everytime my Bey would beat his, but this really caught my attention. "Give me a challenge!" He said that everytime my Bey would have a SF. So I did make a much better combo and it kept Bursting his combo. He started to become more interested in the game itself and went to assemble another combo. Bursting definitely does have a 'hook' on children's attention spans. The fact that SFs itself were a bore to my brother and made him want a challenge, BFs in general, proves this. And to myself, I do agree that the mechanism of Bursting itself, does attract my attention much more. (However I still love MFB) But yes, that's my insight about your theory.

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"Hikaru Hasama and this is Storm Aquario, otherwise known as my most trusted friend." - Hikaru, S1, E6

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Interesting theory.

Thanks! I appreciate it

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The main reason was to fix the teeth issue, and they only burst more with TT launchers. With the packaged hasbro launcher, they burst less, because in order to produce a burst, both beys need to be in high velocity to start producing hits. If enough is given when they are spinning fast, then some clutch finishes can happen in the end. But mainly you need high speed to produce a burst. So it really only happens with the TT lauchers that they weren't intend anyone to use the beys with, if you play with hasbro launchers it works fine. Which makes me wonder how/if a stronger launcher will release and work well.

Well, that was informative. Thank you That answers the Hasbro question, but doesn't dispute the idea of the Burst function in general.

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My perspective here is based on a single immutable "law" which I always obeyed in my previous work (as a video game designer) and which, if you disagree, will otherwise make my argument gibberish:

Children now are the same as they've always been.

This means that the kinds of "play" children enjoyed 10,000 years ago are the same kinds of play children still enjoy today. Playing video games like Gears of War is psychologically no different from pretending you're a saber-tooth tiger and wrestling with your playmates. It's roleplay - and it never gets old, not matter what form it takes.

Similarly, making tiny creatures fight each other (or even pretending they're fighting) is something children have done since pre-history. The only difference now is the actual toys children use. Modern children have far better access to a greater number of toys than ever before, and switching between all the options all the time (just because they're there, usually) makes a child seem "distracted" when they're otherwise just logically exploring all the available options.

Likewise, the rule means today's children are neurologically indistinguishable from caveman children. People's (re: children's) attention-spans are not becoming shorter and shorter. This is an unprovable myth. This view is widely held only because the modern world itself has more and more stimuli to "distract" an individual from pursuing just one single task. If there were only one TV channel, everyone would just watch one TV channel. But there are hundreds of TV channels - so it makes sense to explore them, at least. A child who flits between activities without ever focusing on a single pursuit is not at fault, nor is that child any different from a caveman child - who would have done exactly the same thing, if given the opportunity. Exploration is natural - even if the weight of stimuli is not.

The point is this: given that children do not change, I expect the Beyblade designers of today are striving to achieve the exact same thing as the Beyblade designers of yesteryear. Furthermore, I have good evidence to support this expectation. Following is a quote from my own Formula Bei, where I paraphrase an interview with Osamu Mashimo, the original inventor of Beyblade:

Above all, Mashimo was concerned with the exciting climax of the game as the tops clashed together. It was important that no battle should ever play out like another - each battle should be unique with no predetermined winner. It was clear from the results of Battle Top that children wanted new and unique play every time.

Pay special attention to "the exciting climax of the game" that Mashimo describes and then consider the reaction of Brisk Aquario's brother to a less-than-exciting spin finish:

"Give me a challenge!" He said that everytime my Bey would have a SF. So I did make a much better combo and it kept Bursting his combo. He started to become more interested in the game itself and went to assemble another combo.

A spin finish is not what I would call "boring" but it is definitely the least-violent result attainable in Beyblade. Which tends to make it the least-satisfying as well. The idea of "climax" is something which every narrative benefits from - even a narrative as simple as two tops fighting in a bowl. A big, exciting finish is never a bad thing. Mashimo knew this when he invented Beyblade in 1999. The inventors of Burst are just building on this original idea.

Speaking of the inventors of Burst... From the publicity material that was released when Burst was announced, I'd say it's safe to assume that the Burst mechanic itself was designed by Kenji Horikoshi. Before Horikoshi became a Beyblade designer, he was the principle designer of Takara's Choro-Q toy cars. When Beyblade got big, Takara-Tomy made Horikoshi turn Choro-Q into a collectible battling game called Battle Deck. Battle Deck was basically Beyblade but with windup cars instead of spinning tops. Far as I am aware, I am the only person in the world to have ever played Battle Deck and I still own all the toys - so I believe my following comments may be relevant:

In Battle Deck, you take a toy car and adorn it with all manner of armor and weapons. Then you place it on a special track and send it toward an opponent at top speed. The cars collide and one contestant is typically thrown from the track. But the best result in Battle Deck is when you actually explode your opponent's car! The toys weren't designed to explode - but all the weapons were only held on by friction (no screws or clips) so explosions do inevitably occur. There is NO WAY Horikoshi would not have noticed this - and he would certainly have noticed the positive reactions of the players. Explosions are exciting. Go figure.

Beyblade changed when Horikoshi showed up. He has a history of messing with the Beyblade metagame (Maximum Series, anyone?) and I have no doubt he would abandon the traditional Beyblade design in an instant if he thought he could emulate the "climax" finishes from Battle Deck. Burst is the natural evolution of Horikoshi's personal design portfolio.

FURTHERMORE... Yes, there's more!

Let's not forget that Beyblade has its roots firmly in beigoma. While most people think of beigoma as tiny cast-iron spinning tops, the original beigoma (which means "shell spinning top") were made from seashells, individually packed with clay, sand and lead shot. Yes, the original beigoma were customizable - just like Beyblade. But more importantly for Burst, the original beigoma did indeed "burst" during a fight, spilling the packed contents of the shell everywhere in a climactic explosion. Cool, no? Point being that Japanese children have been playing Burst for hundreds of years... So I doubt its reinvention now has anything to do with children's attention spans.

However, I still think your theory holds weight. Why did they bother inventing Burst?

To draw, and try to keep attention.

Yup. That's the one. But this idea is not specific to Burst or to the children of today or to American children specifically. Any designer who does not, on some level, try to draw and keep the attention of their audience is not really a designer at all. Burst just stands on the shoulders of giants.

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I definitely agree on your theory. The idea of Beys Bursting was a brilliant idea. It is true that children are having shorter attention spans as I have seen that, especially in my brother. Just throwing this out: He decided to play Beyblade Burst with me a few days ago. He would just rage quit everytime my Bey would beat his, but this really caught my attention. "Give me a challenge!" He said that everytime my Bey would have a SF. So I did make a much better combo and it kept Bursting his combo. He started to become more interested in the game itself and went to assemble another combo. Bursting definitely does have a 'hook' on children's attention spans. The fact that SFs itself were a bore to my brother and made him want a challenge, BFs in general, proves this. And to myself, I do agree that the mechanism of Bursting itself, does attract my attention much more. (However I still love MFB) But yes, that's my insight about your theory.

Thank you for the feedback and insight. It actually brings up some interesting points. Also, it piques my interest that your brother acted that way. I'm sort of into child psychology. Ever since I found out my little brother and sister were autistic, I've had a fascination with children with some sort of documented mental difference, and how children in general think, so this kind of solidifies how I feel about this theory.

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Beylon - Thank you for actually taking the time to write all of this out. You actually have informed me of several things that I had not known prior to writing this post. Unfortunately, it does kind of make my theory look elementary and under-researched. It was a theory I, however, had made on the spot, so to speak, and although it does hold weight, a lot of your points do disprove certain elements of it. Do I feel it's been debunked? Slightly. Do I feel stupid? Not necessarily. I can't say I completely agree with your idea of children not having the attention spans of the children of yesteryear, but I can say I understand the idea of Burst and why it was created, or at least implemented in this specific case.

Children have been proven to have shorter attention spans. It's fact. More and more kids are starting to do worse in school due to a lack of paying attention and a lack of motivation. A lot of them can not stand to be fixated on one thing for more than a few seconds before having to move to something new. Now, I'm not saying this is due to any physical or mental changes in children due to evolution or anything. Also, please do not think i mean all children. This is just a general post. I think it's more disciplinary than anything. More and more children are being born from parents that are getting younger and younger as years pass. These children normally (not in all cases) end up being raised with less discipline, respect, motivation, and honestly, intelligence. Children cant raise children effectively in most cases. Now, your right in the fact that they do have an access to a greater amount of stimuli, and they haven't exactly grasped the concept of time management yet, and I WILL admit that children can play in the same manner as they did years ago, as far as the idea of roleplaying goes. But I think the overwhelming amount of stimuli makes them very scatterbrained and they never learn to be able to stay fixated on any one thing for a good amount of time, so they lack the discipline to do so. And honestly, I see more and more children with mobile phones, tablets, and spending time on the Internet than I see kids running around with sticks, pretending they're swords and climbing on a playground that they deem is their castle. I have a 3 year old daughter so, yeah, I'm at the playground a lot to witness this. I, also, am a 24 year old male, with a full-time job and I spend a boatload of time trying to get my child to be active, intelligent, and respectful. She, consequently, has shown more aptitude in her intellectual and physical abilities than other children I've witnessed. Not to brag, or say my kid is better than the other kids, it's just something I've noticed and has been noted by others. Digital entertainment has become means to babysit children as well. Giving the parents a chance to be less involved with their child, and more free to do as they please whIle the child's attention is elsewhere. This also doesnt really help the negative behavioral patterns that are always being called to people's attention about children. I will admit that I've seen kids be able to pay attention to things of their interest for extended periods of time, but most of the time it's something that is very dynamic and has a lot of flashing colors, violent movement, etc. This would be enough to grab anyone's attention. So the burst function may not necessarily be implemented for the purpose of grabbing attention because attention spans have shortened, but it does grab attention and it does help bring people to the game for longer periods of time, which is a great business and marketing tool. Either way, I have spoken my piece about children's behavioral patterns and attention spans. I do believe you are correct in a lot of your statements, and you have a great case. I just believe that there is plenty of difference in kids now and in children of the past as far as behavior and attention spans go.

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I think all of the discussion here is really interesting but I also think it might be a bit too in-depth. Takara-Tomy had already exhausted the most obvious evolutionary move of "make everything metal!" with Metal Fight Beyblade, so it was probably less obvious where to go next. However, another metal series might have seemed redundant.

If I was coming up with a list of marketable gimmicks to freshen up Beyblade's core concept, "they explode" would be pretty high at the top of the list. Something about Burst feels almost inevitable. Until we can control tops with our minds, anyway.

It did get pretty in-depth for a random on the spot theory, but I mean, it got really interesting, too! I think it did travel into being less about Beyblade and more about child psychology though, lol. Still, the idea of Burst is really cool, and I see several reasons as to why they've added it

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I'm always happy for any thread that gets Beylon to trudge up some deep lost bey-lore.

no, Burst isn't to hold your attention, It's because Toys that crash or "break" on Purpose are cool to play with. look at toys that have crashing and Explosions theme, You'll find that their some of the most bought toys in the series. So the fact these tops "explode" will no doubt be popular, especially when getting a burst gives you the most points.

Secondly, there are many reasons why kids are focusing less and less in school. One of the major reasons are Lazier and boring teachers. Kids are naturally energetic and they DO want to learn, however, that being said, you need to hold their attention and Lazy and Boring teachers aren't going to cut it. Seriously, people want to blame the kid for everything when the outside stimuli isn't very Stimulating.

oh and don't say School isn't suppose to be fun. I had Fun in school with several Teachers and did much better because of it.

no, Burst isn't to hold your attention, It's because Toys that crash or "break" on Purpose are cool to play with. look at toys that have crashing and Explosions theme, You'll find that their some of the most bought toys in the series. So the fact these tops "explode" will no doubt be popular, especially when getting a burst gives you the most points.

Secondly, there are many reasons why kids are focusing less and less in school. One of the major reasons are Lazier and boring teachers. Kids are naturally energetic and they DO want to learn, however, that being said, you need to hold their attention and Lazy and Boring teachers aren't going to cut it. Seriously, people want to blame the kid for everything when the outside stimuli isn't very Stimulating.

oh and don't say School isn't suppose to be fun. I had Fun in school with several Teachers and did much better because of it.

You're coming in strong, so I'll give the same sentiment.

So, you're telling me that something being, "cool to play with" doesn't hold your attention? Interesting. I didn't realize toy makers made toys because they didn't want kids to pay attention to what they were playing with, but they just wanted kids to play with them while their attention was elsewhere. Seems like a great way to make a boatload of money and be successful in the industry.

Secondly, if you actually read the post, you'd see I'm not blaming the children for anything. I'm blaming outside sources impeding their development, and making it harder for them to efficiently focus on things, or keep their attention wherever it may need to be. Discipline seems to forge to more resilient and strong-willed individuals, and has shown to improve focus. Look at the military. Do you think they want to focus on standing in formation, and staring at a flag, or an NCO who is yelling at them, or on their classes at AIT to learn their MOS? No. Of course not. It's boring as all heck. But they're trained to focus. Not saying we should militarize our youth because that would be overkill, and kids need to be kids, but it's just an example of how discipline breeds focus. And I don't mean discipline like beating your kids, or yelling at them, or whatever. I'm not talking strictly about punishment, but regardless, my personal views, nor yours or anyone else's personal views on children's focus aren't what this thread is for. It was about why the burst function was added. I get that it may have been overkill. Hindsight is always 20/20. It was just an interesting thought i had at the time that pertained to Beyblade, and I thought I'd share it.

Lastly, I wasn't going to say anything about school, "not being fun". School isn't meant to be a place where you go to play, no. Will there be work involved? Yes. But does that mean you can't enjoy yourself while you're there? No. I will admit, there are a lack of teachers that can really make classes seem interesting, and fun, and, with that, deliver the information they are dictated by the state to teach. Students will be more apt to pay attention to, "fun" or "attractive" teachers. It's fact. But, once again, years ago students paid attention and strived to work hard because it was what was expected of them, and they wanted to work diligently to meet those expectations because they had motivation, drive, and they cared about their futures. They had discipline and respect, which are dying virtues, unfortunately. Now, I'm speaking generally, not specifically. And I'm not saying, "all children are bad, and they suck at paying attention, and I'm old, and back in my day, blah, blah...", but there are undeniable facts underlying here that you can be ignorant and blind to, but then you are then just feeding the animal. Making excuses doesn't make progress. I'm not out here saving the world or anything, but at least I'm aware, and doing my part to try and battle this. But, as a whole, these are mostly personal views that may not necessarily fit yours, and that's fine, but I think I need to try and either close this thread or get the topic back onto Beyblade. Either that or move this thread to the general discussion board that DOESN'T have to do with Beyblade.

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Some interesting posts on a potentially flammable subject. But rather than go back down the line of what "attention span" means and whose fault it is, I thought I'd get back to the research angle. Let's pick up where we left off:

Kenji Horikoshi was originally a designer at Takara, working on Choro-Q. After the Takara-Tomy merger of 2005-06, he was assigned to work on his own battling version of Choro-Q called Battle Deck, which inadvertently had an exploding mechanism. I previously argued that this may have influenced his drive to design an exploding mechanism for Beyblade.

But then Dark_Mousy reposted this video...

I only arrived at the WBO in 2010, continuing my research into miniature combat robots - which means I missed almost every Japanese toy made prior to this point. I also live in Australia, which was largely xenophobic until just recently and only really discovered the internet about 2005. There was basically no way I could have known about "Cross Arms B-Daman" except by falling upon it by chance.

Over in Formula Bei, I wrote a lengthy article about the history of Beyblade and the invention of Sugegoma - which is apparently the first incarnation of the Beyblade idea from Takara (other companies were making stuff long beforehand). At the conclusion of that article, I hypothesized that the Sugegoma would likely return to the modern toy market in some form:

With all the major franchise reboots and Takara-Tomy's recent focus on "post-Beyblade" products, perhaps we will witness the ultimate return of SugeGoma?

But I had no way of knowing (no way of googling) that Sugegoma had indeed already been rebooted by Takara in 2005-06. Turns out they remade Sugegoma as Cross Arms and reintegrated it into the B-Daman toyline to coincide with the winding-down of Beyblade.

And who was the lead designer on the B-Daman toys during the Takara-Tomy merger? You guessed it: Kenji Horikoshi.

So let's take a closer look at Cross Arms, with everything you need to know in this wonderful unboxing video. Many of you will remember these toys as a post-Beyblade failure. They were even marketed as "Beyblade Evolved" which is ironic, being a reboot of a pre-Beyblade product. They were essentially gyroscope-dolls where you remove the legs and make them spin in a fighting arena. Sugegoma was a trick-based toy and did not use a ripcord; so the concept really did evolved after the success of Beyblade. Cross Arms even uses a Beyblade ripcord (reminiscent of Battle Top) and I assume this has some relation to the original Beyblade running cores? Can somebody confirm this?

Taking on the roll of combat toys, Cross Arms also inherits a classic feature of Rock'Em Sock'Em tradition - the fighting dolls punch each other's heads off. The attachment mechanism for the heads appears to be related to HMS, as demonstrated in this video. What we're seeing here is essentially an exploding spinning top mechanism, designed by Kenji Horikoshi circa 2005. Not coincidence.

All design evolves. Rarely is there something new. Horikoshi may not have designed Burst wholly on the back of Cross Arms but it's another piece of evidence to suggest today's Beyblades are a natural evolution of the Takara ethos and the whims of its very real (and occasionally flawed) designers.

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it's simple, Beyblade are toys targeted for young Children, it takes a lot more effort for young kids to burst their beyblade.

my 7 and 9 year old struggle to burst the takara tomy beyblades and they got bored with it pretty fast, if hasbro identified the problem with TT beys then this is a good thing that they improved it.