I admit that I do buy only full teams or all of the main rider forms if it's a show that I like. I can see why the other Sentai teams didn't sell since fans most likely want to buy the rangers that they like.

We're not talking about an untapped market here, we're talking about a product that has consistently failed to sell outside of a few notable releases.

Think about it, back when we first got SHFiguarts Sentai releases, nobody had any reason to believe that full teams wouldn't eventually be completed, and yet the line still didn't perform up to Bandai's standards. That right there set a precedent for the future of Sentai figuarts. Simply put, if they had the potential to be huge sellers, theoretically speaking Bandai would have tried to capitalize on this. Keep in mind that these figures also came out at a time where Bandai's attention wasn't split between a billion franchises so it's not like the Super Sentai figures had much else to compete with.



I'm not afraid of them trying to do it. I'd love to have a full team of Timeranger, Abaranger, and Megaranger. Just from a business perspective, there's not much reason for them to do it. Business decisions are much more complex than throwing something at a wall and hoping it sticks. With toy companies, there has to be a sizable enough market to overcome the inevitable production costs, and driving them up to create toys for a franchise that historically hasn't faired well just doesn't make that much sense.

You and others may be willing to do that. Others aren't and are perfectly fine with only having one or two figures to represent that series. And you can't try to appease both crowds without making the production costs absurdly high.

Having the Figuart in hand, I just sort of noticed that Drive is the first Heisei rider since Hibiki not to have a jewel on his helmet. I guess Hibiki doesn't really count though, because if I recall he wasn't designed to be a Kamen Rider initially. So I guess Drive is the first one who's intentionally lacking it. I mean, he's got the rider symbol, but no jewel.

Hibiki was always designed to be a Rider.

Regarding Hibiki, here's a good post by Igadevil on the topic: http://igadevil.tumblr.com/post/5532...u-mention-that

The post in a nutshell: Hibiki was ALWAYS designed to be a rider. During Blade, there were talks of putting Rider on hiatus, but they ultimately decided against bringing back Henshin Ninja Arashi or an original show with a Japanese motif because Bandai wanted to keep the franchise going. Hibiki was never designed as anything else than a Kamen Rider, but its heavy influence of Japanese folklore was inspired by previous things that were considered as alternatives.

I was under the impression most Sentai collectors only bought the Robos anyway?

I'd have assumed the forehead jewel was a consistent theme, but Hibiki stretches the theme to "forehead decoration." Drive could be the second with that theme, but you could also argue - persuasively, I think - that the lights that run up his forehead stand in for jewels.

Something I love about these designs is that references to the first Kamen Rider are always there, but wholly abstracted. Hibiki dropped the compound eyes, but the horns (representing antennae) and belt seem to me to be clear references. Ryuki had already set a precedent by almost completely obscuring the compound eyes. Wizard re-imagined the compound eyes as smooth jewels, and Drive re-imagined them as headlights.

Part of the fun for me is trying to figure out which design elements were deliberately playing off Kamen Rider 1, and which are just my imagination.

Unrelated: whichever of you posted, "All we needs is Drive," thank you! I was starting to think I was the only person who noticed. (I also wish subbers would stop fixing the flub, which I find to be charming.)

Me too. :p

Kivala listing's up on AmiAmi:

http://www.amiami.com/top/detail/det...=FIGURE-011354

I read that as Kiva and freaked out for a moment. Then I read it again, realized we haven't even heard tell of him getting a release yet, and felt silly.

Wishful mind playing tricks on me.