Friendly Fandoms: With B-Daman; both are created by Takara Tomy.
Fandom Rivalry: It has a notorious rivalry with the four other similar contemporary series Pokémon, Digimon Adventure, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and Monster Rancher. Yu Gi Oh! vs Beyblade vs Digimon is the main rivalry. It gained a fifth rival - Bakugan - in the late 2000s. Its rivalry with Bakugan picked up steam when both were rebooted in the late 2010's.
Memetic Mutation: Beyblade isn't that serious.explanation During early 2024, TikTok would explode the franchise’s exposure in response to how ridiculous the spinning tops would be taken in the franchise with this sarcastic statement as a tagline. As characters In-Universe would basically be doing all sorts crazy stuff just get better at playing a spinning top and become living WMDs whenever they launch their Limit Break. Metal Fusion is the most cited as an example among the various incarnations due to Beys being capable of rewriting history and mythology along with the ridiculous power being thrown around.
The tagline for the franchise is "Let it rip". May count as Narm Charm for some though.
The Serious Business of the various anime is treated like this by many viewers, despite other such franchises getting away with this just fine. One such example involves the importance of Beyblade being demonstrated with a flashback to Moses parting the Red Sea with a Beyblade.
Narm Charm: While the Mundane Made AwesomeSerious Business of Beyblade can potentially fall into Narm for some as detailed above, for others, it pretty much makes the series Crazy Is Cool incarnate, as these battles with these little tops have all sorts of insane absurdities happening ranging from military members using Beyblades in place of guns, summoning the gates of Hell for a special attack, trying to fire a Beyblade at someone like a sniper-based assassination, a battle through the streets leading to explosions everywhere, a battle annihilating mountains, or flat out apocalyptic events happening across the planet, all potentially because of a simple spinning top.
Obscure Popularity: Beyblade is popular amongst children, with several popular anime and a successful toyline of beys. Despite this, it's rarely mentioned for being anything besides "another one of the Pokémon clones" (alongside Yu-Gi-Oh! and Digimon) and nothing but the first anime gets referenced. In later years, Metal Fusion and its sequels are sometimes the only ones referenced, with its predecessor seemingly forgotten and its successor ignored because it's made of lame plastic instead of awesome metal. Despite this, Burst is much more popular with kids who were introduced to it first.
The tabletop game provides examples of:
Author's Saving Throw: Hasbro announcing that Beyblade X would be localized with minimal or no alterations at all is likely an attempt at this. The altered performance of Hasbro's Metal Saga Beyblades was grumbled over by its more competitive fans, but they generally got by unless they really wanted to import the Japanese versions. However, the major changes to Burst starting with the SlingShock system were met with a lot of outcry from older fans due to greatly simplifying the new Attack Layers and removing the majority of metal from everything except the Forge Disc. Many long time players who swore off Hasbro previously are now willing to give them a second chance, especially since it could mean saving a lot of money on imports.
Many popular strategies are simply the tried-and-true variety, usually something based around what the last tournament winner used — either their exact build or one designed to beat it. See Bribing Your Way to Victory and Crippling Overspecialization in the Tabletop Game page.
In Burst Cho-Z and beyond, Takara Tomy products are much preferred over Hasbro due to these generations having some of the most drastic differences between versions. Hasbro products started off loyal to the original incarnations but later omitted plenty of original gimmicks for exclusive ones. Gimmicks suck as SlingShock and SpeedStorm were dependent on a special arena and almost don't work in a tournament-standard stadium.
Due to the majority of Fusion Wheels being rounded, the metagame of Metal Saga was primarily Stamina and Defense builds, or a hybrid of both. It doesn't help that the attack type wheels pre-4D were an identical shape to Storm, an already outclassed part. Some of the best wheels included the prone-to-breaking Blitz and uncustomizable Variaries. Non-offensive wheels such as Twisted and Phantom found use in aggressive builds, but sacrificed the greater stamina and defense they brought as a passive combo.
In the plastic era, the 10bBistool was an absolute beast, especially in official tournaments with their large stadiums. It was good enough to win multiple tournaments... And to appear in the anime as a Beyblade assembled by the Chief to be next-to-invincible among normal Bladers.
For Beyblade Burst, you can glue your Burst Bey to prevent the others from landing Burst Finish. And not many people would actually notice that. However, note two things: first, you can't change out parts anymore if you do; second, this is absolutely against the rules and will disqualify you in official games. In fact, one of the rules is that your opponent will disassemble and inspect the Bey to ensure there's nothing funny going on.
Sharp bottoms that spin freely using ball bearings. Ball bearings are designed to reduce friction, which means coupled with a sharp tip your bey will have incredible stamina. During Metal Fight, Bearing:Drive was so broken that its successor in Burst had to have weaker spring locks to balance out the incredible spin time it would provide. Despite the weak burst resistance to any combo it was on it was still broken.
Hilarious in Hindsight: Early on after Burst was released, a lot of fans of the Metal Saga fans criticized it for going back to more plastic and less weight like the original series. Near the end of its run, Burst introduced the Dynamite Battle Layer system, which on average has more metal than even Shogun Steel Synchrome Beyblades.
Shooters and launchers have not changed much over the course of the game's history. The ripcords released for the Hasbro version of Metal Fusion are even the same ones used in the original toys. The String Launcher was celebrated as a major upgrade (being an improvement of the Duel Shooter, itself powerful if inconvenient), but Burst started out the series with ripcords again. Some want the ripcord launchers to have a gearing mechanism for faster spins, while others want the string version to be available from the beginning. Burst getting string launchers in all regions finally is much rejoiced, but brings up questions of why they didn't just start with them besides a Mid-Season Upgrade. Plus, Hasbro's Starter Packs always come with ripcord launchers with the Dual Threat in short supply and the Golden String Launcher only available in a limited run set.
With Shogun Steel, Hasbro just used the same launchers as Metal Fury straight until the end. Japan, on the other hand, had redesigned the launchers to be slightly stronger and include the necessary tools to assemble your Beyblade into it. Despite this, some fans thought it was a smart move since it meant players wouldn't have to buy all-new launcher grips again, which were notoriously complicated for Zero-Gnote The grip attached with a screw into the tip tool on top of the launcher and was prone to alignment issues and occasionally falling off.. The Light and String Launchers for the Japanese version also weren't considered to be real improvements, since you had to stand over the stadium since the rip-cord/string had to be pulled straight up instead of to the side.
A downplayed example in Burst. Guilty Longinus was well received in terms of performance as a stock combo, but many fans were a bit displeased with how little differences it had from Rage Longinus.
Many fans were displeased with the upcoming Pro Series release of Ace Dragon due to already having its evolved form Command Dragon as a pro series release.
"Real Beyblades are made of metal."Explanation The biggest criticism of Burst by fans of the Metal Saga is that the upper parts are plastic instead of metal. This is ignoring that every generation has had both metal and plastic parts, and that plastic upper parts was how the original series Beyblades worked. Also, this continues despite the fact that in later seasons of Burst, there is more metal in the average Beyblade than there was at any point in the Metal Saga.
"Double Cyclone Belial" Explanation A reddit post showed one user who got a packaging error of the Astral Spriggan Customize set which came with '''two''' Astral Spriggan layers. Many concluded that some poor sap out there's going to buy a relatively pricey set for Spriggan only to receive two Cyclone Belial layers (The second layer that comes with the set)
Most Wonderful Sound: For long-time fans of the Metal Saga. The Dynamite Battle system has some of the largest solo Forge Discs and with high mode can create plenty of exposure to it. Hearing metal to metal clash after so long gives a great sense of nostalgia.
Many fans who started collecting or playing during the Metal Saga don't like that the metal wheels from their series were replaced with plastic in Burst. However, this is often because they don't know about the original series at all, and think Metal Fusion was the original Beyblade toyline. It also ignores that metal weights have been used in every series of Beyblade and that having the main contact points of the toy being metal has its disadvantages.
Plenty of Beyblade gimmicks originated since the plastic generation. The Reboot Driver was actually preceded by Final:Drive whose ability was seen all the way back on Dranzer. Use of mechanisms such as gears and ball bearings are not new, changing modes was never a modern thing and dual-spin was a staple of the originals.
Pandering to the Base: Dynamite Battle is seen as this to the competitive fanbase, although casual players enjoy it as well. This generation has included some of the most solid releases with every single part having great competitive use to some degree. Almost every release is an upgrade of fan-favorite beys, whose parts have their gimmicks taken up to eleven. Not to mention, it includes Driver upgrades many have been asking for such as Bearing', High Xtend+' and Atomic'. It can be seen especially with the release of Random Booster Vol. 27, whose prize bey is Perfect Belial and its random combos being viable in the DB Meta such as Dynamite Valkyrie (with F gear and/or L gear), Guilty Spriggan and Vanish Longinus.
Polished Port: The Metal Saga String Launcher was surprisingly improved for the Hasbro release, which was nearly identical to the first version of the TakaraTomy version except for a few minor fixes. First, the handle was given a longer bushing to prevent the string breaking, which was never addressed any of the Japanese releases.note They instead resorted to add-ons to prevent damage, from a piece that made the handle slip if pulled too hard to an honest-to-goodness shock absorber assembly. Second, it used the somewhat stronger prongs that the second TT string launcher received, making it less prone to breaking there too.
Some fans of the original series were not too thrilled with the Metal Saga and Shogun Steel toys. Common complaints are smaller size (only true when compared to HMS Beyblades), lack of large spikes, and needing a tool to assemble properly. Others didn't like that height played such a big part when older toys are all roughly the same height, or are specifically taller or shorter as part of their gimmick. Others didn't like the lack of left-spinners, and that spin direction is determined by both the Energy Ring and the Fusion/Chrome Wheel, which limited combinations since they had to be compatible. Most left-spin parts being L-Drago variants and the one ambidextrous Energy ring only working with one Fusion Wheel didn't help. Unfortunately, these changes were made to address previous problems like breakage, since large points created more stress and the metal wheels tend to last much longer.
Burst, as a result, addresses some of these complaints by making some of the tops spikier but with thicker plastic and going back to using the metal parts mainly for balance and spin time. However, even this was met with criticism; fans of older series don't like that rounds can end in less than 10 seconds with a Burst Finish, while fans of Metal Saga don't like how samey a lot of parts feel due to all parts of a given type being roughly the same size. The biggest complaint of all, though, is that the Energy Layers aren't metal leading to superficial critics often saying "real Beyblades are made of metal." This is ignoring that from Cho-Z onward in the Japanese toyline, all Beyblades have metal in their Energy Layers but surrounded by plastic to protect the metal parts from fatigue that caused Metal Saga Beyblades to be more prone to breakage. In fact, starting with Gatinko, Burst Beyblades have more metal on average than Metal Saga Beyblades including Shogun Steel.
The changes Hasbro made to the international versions, especially from Turbo onwards, were met with heavy criticism.
While TakaraTomy continued focusing on the competitive aspects of the line, Hasbro instead chose to try new gimmicks to make the game feel more fresh and fun. However, older fans in particular complained that these gimmicks removed most of the variation in performance, especially in Rise where the first two or three waves of tips are worked more or less exactly the same. Even as the subline continued, new tips didn't work as differently in practice as they seemed to on paper.
Some of TakaraTomy's gimmicked Forge Disks from Cho-Z onward were replaced with altered versions that are compatible with Disk Frames. In other cases, they were replaced with basic Disks from as early as the first year of the toyline, many of which are no longer even remotely competitively viable. The much maligned Ring Forge Disc, which was outclassed even in the first wave of toys, continues to see release in Hasbro markets even when Takara stopped using it during the second year.
Many of the Japanese Beyblades from that Gatinko System that did use Forge Disks with Frames had the Frames left out entirely for the Hasbro release. Even then, Hasbro seemingly decided to stop adapting new Disk Frames at some point, and stopped including them all together in the Rise toyline. Several went without an international release until a few new ones were finally introduced in Surge, but some are still East Asia exclusive.
As a result, Hasbro addressed this by just releasing unaltered Japanese molds under the Pro Series banner. They also started adapting and including parts in a more straightforward way in Surge, such as Superking's Wheel disk and new Disk Frames being used.
Even in the original series, some fans weren't too keen on the shift from their well-established Spin Gear System to the new Hard Metal System. Some of these complaints were somewhat valid, like the Bit Protector seeming to be a more flimsy connection compared to how the Attack Ring and Blade Base attacked to the Spin Gear. The Weight Discs all being perfectly round but different weights didn't help. Others, however, didn't like it simply because it wasn't what they were used to.
Generally subverted during the Metal Saga, as each new season's upgrades were received positively. The fact that new gimmicks were mostly self-contained (Fusion Wheels having variable parts that only work with that wheel) helped, since it meant a given Beyblade would be unique and wouldn't obligate the rest of the line to include it if a particular player didn't like that specific gimmick.
Also subverted with Hasbro leaving out decals for most of Burst. Given how small the stickers themselves often are, and the fact that they are exactly sized for the spot where they are meant to go, no one really missed having to put them on. Even importers often leave them off due to the frustration of having to get them exactly right and then eventually flaking off anyway. In fact, the inclusion of decals in Pro Series (being a direct copy of the Japanese molds) will likely gain a bit of ire for being too close to the originals since many of the details the Japanese versions get through decals were replaced with tampographs in the main Hasbro releases.
The addition of modified Drivers such as dash and high variants were well-received due to improvements they had to their regular counterparts. The metal variants were not. The metal lock cap on these drivers would wear down the teeth of a layer/core/chip much faster and lessen the burst resistance of a bey.
Zig-zagged with the Dynamite Battle stadium. Unlike the previous versions, this one contains a flat surface outside the depression before the tornado ridge. This change makes it harder for K.O beys as the upper deck prevents them from leaving the stadium immediately after a strong hit. It also breaks movement patterns of fast beys and may even cause them to slow down and burn stamina while on the flat deck. Those who favor a passive playstyle enjoy this change especially for those who prefer Bearing, Atomic and Drift Drivers, but people who like an aggressive playstyle don't like how this change essentially nerfed attack types. Although there are those aggressive players who enjoy the additional challenge and like having to create new builds to overcome this change.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Many wish the DB Custom Beylaunchers had more customization options. There are only a small handful of available colors per part, and if you want the best launcher while personalizing it, you're out of luck because the Full Custom Launcher parts only come in gold. Along with cosmetics, there is also a lack of performance-based parts only make making the launch more powerful and nothing else. Painting launchers and accessories are legal provided that they do not affect performance, but it defeats the entire point of the launcher's feature.
The Scrappy: While there are beys that are intentionally weak, they are still genuinely usable. But many agree that Savior Valkyrie was not only the worst Dynamite Battle release, but also the weakest Valkyrie incarnation and even the weakest bey in the entire Burst line. The Valkyrie core's teeth wore down really easily especially with its bound attacks, which meant it was highly prone to bursting for an attack-type, not helped by its layer with rubber. A worn-down Valkyrie I core caused it to lose frequently, even to Single Layers, not helped by the Shot Driver (although fun to play with) causes self K.O's quite often, thus solidifying its status as one of the most awful beys among fans.
was an absolute beast, especially in official tournaments with their large stadiums. It was good enough to win multiple tournaments... And to appear in the anime as a Beyblade assembled by the Chief to be next-to-invincible among normal Bladers.