[NeonZ]

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Chaos Entity

There is a huge difference between Premium Bandai items and mass-retail items, as far as toy development goes. Premium Bandai items often are added much later, and are influenced by the show. Mass-release items, though, are decided months and months in advance of both their in-show debut and release to the public.

The Bannou Driver and Mirai Driver were Premium Bandai items. The Evol Driver and Buggle Driver Zwei were not.

Thusly, the Evol Driver and Buggle Driver Zwei would have been planned very, very early in the show's run...if not even before it had started.

That's what I'm saying though. Ohmori's trend of pushing a Rider as the main villain wouldn't be known by Bandai's staff during the planning phase of Drive (or if it was known they wouldn't know if it would well received) but when they were working with him again in Ex-Aid and Build, it was a known factor, which is why it was incorporated into the main toyline (but still as remolds/repaints since it's not really a big focus for Bandai itself).

Someone like Shirakura has no interest in that, and it's still a relatively minor element for the toyline (which is why they didn't push unique toys) so it got sidelined again. I really think you're underestimating the influence of the main producer if you think those changes are just in response to sales. Even in q1, you can see that Ohmori's series have been pushing antagonists with some exclusive roleplay toy (Chase, Genm, Rogue/Stark) but that disappeared from Zi-O (which seemingly replaced that with the old gadget type toys) only to return now with Zero-One (Jin and Horobi). I'd guess we'll see the same thing happening to the 3rd quarter driver.