Of all the things in this show that was rumored to come back, I did NOT expect Shochaku Henshin, let alone it ACTUALLY coming back.

I refuse to accept it as the Souchaku Henshin line unless there are tiny helmetless heads!

So they've begun to post images for the toys, they're already covered on the front page,I'll just post my thoughts;

Dx ValvaraDraw and ValvaRusher - Interesting names, I'm guessing with the fact that his equipment has 4 Vehicle cards, Valvarad/Valvarado's deal is that he'll specialize in them for the show.

Gotchard AntWrestler - Is the typical bruiser form (Punching Kong/Monster Buckle/Kong Genome), I'm surprised the legs don't get armor at all. I suppose this means not all the armors will cover Gotchard's full body, but rather will only armor certain places to create a unique silhouette.

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Lastly, and not related to the new images Tokunation posted;

An eagle-eyed user on reddit noticed the toy versions of the Ride Chemy Cards actually have their Rarities noted near the bottom next to their id code:

https://news.tokunation.com/wp-conte...raw-Buckle.jpg

There are... 8 rarities: Common -> Rare -> Super Rare -> Legend Rare -> Ultra Rare -> Extra Rare -> Parallel Rare -> Legend Parallel Rare

Combined with the Rider Wikia's claim that each category (Insect, Animal, Vehicle, etc) will have 10 cards and... I do not envy the Toy Collectors this season.

not to take it to a crude place and not that bandai or toei care about English at all, but it tickles me that "Valvarusher" is just one letter away from a very different kind of stick-shaped electronic toy...;)

On topic though, I dunno... these designs aren't "bad" per se, I'm just really not feeling them though. To be honest, I think the chrome teal for the main rider looks really cheap. I think it would've been better/cooler just to make it metallic teal.

I also kind of find it boring that the Rival character is just the same colors as Machine Chaser and say Calibur, Horobi, half a dozen other recent "bad guy Riders"--I suppose someone in Japan thinks that making the "bad guy" purple & silver is easy to understand for kids, I just wish someone would buck that trope eventually. No reason a bad guy can't be red/white/blue, just look at Starscream lol

AND SOUCHAKU HENSHIN RISES FROM THE GRAVE HOLY SHIT

For the first time in a long while I actually want to buy the KR collectible action figure line again. I really like the look of AppareSkebo and AntWrestler a lot. Not big on SteamHopper, sadly though. I dunno, grasshopper Riders have my respect, but I kind of find them a bit too safe to do. I like the stranger nontypical forms and Riders to begin with, too.

To be fair, the Den-O and Kiva lines pretty much excised the tiny helmetless heads, unless you don't count those as Souchaku Henshin figures.

Honestly I'm really glad that Gotchard AntWrestler won't have armor on his legs. Gives me a lot of hope that the other forms will have different placements on his body for more variety in silhouettes.

As for the rarities, wowie, really hope that the toy collectors for this season are also card collectors, because otherwise they're gonna need to learn a whole new type of patience for that.

Here's a look at some of the legend Rider cards from Gotchard. Looks like the bottom right corner next to the card rarity tells you what the Rider cards pair with: Geats + Ziin, Zero-One + Den-O, Agito + Blade, Kiva + Wizard, Decade + Zi-O, Fourze + Build, Gaim + Drive, Faiz + Kuuga, Ex-Aid + Hibiki, & W + OOO.

Boxes with cards cost $1.5 each. Plus, it seems to me that many will not bother because of this, but will simply try to collect all 101 cards from different types of rarities.

Interesting combinations. Not the ones you think of first. Is there an underside to look at the helmets?

We're doing Souchaku Henshin again?! Damn, now that's quite a callback. Only figures I have from that line are Ryuki and Ouja, but the armor-up gimmick was a lot of fun