[Suribot]

I feel like anyone claiming that Kabuto is when things got silly didn't watch Ryuki. I don't mean to sound snobby, but to me, some of their cringe-worthy attempts at "humor" episodes were far worse than anything that came after. I love the show to death, but whenever they tried to be funny, it hurt me in places I didn't know existed.

And really, Ryuki set the ground for a lot more of the toyetic elements of the Heisei shows. It's where we got the talking gear, the toyetic weapons, the humor and "humor". It was small, but the show and the R&M toyline laid the groundwork for what came after. Faiz is when we started getting weapons that the show itself seemed to just forget about and not really feel the need to explain (and the copious rider gear for toys), Blade didn't have it as strongly as Ryuki or Faiz, but when Hibiki was officially being developed as a Rider show, it kicked the same toyetic elements into high gear, that followed through in Kabuto. It's not really like it started at any one point, it's been slowly happening since the start. Kuuga and Agito are really the only ones mostly free of toyetic elements, and even then, I don't think that's the case.

The "kid's show" element was there in the third year of the Heisei era. Even before Decade, 7 out of 9 of the shows went for toyetic features.