[NeonZ]

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Originally Posted by The Chaos Entity

The team at toei can affect some things - like designs and colours, but they likely can't add (unless Bandai have reason to believe it'll sell) - and definitely not take away, things Bandai wants to sell.

I really don't think a repaint or minor modification is "taking away" though. Pushing to avoid one of those isn't really the same as pushing against actual unique items.

Baron's situation is kind of different since like you say there that didn't involve Bandai adding any toys, it was just the tv staff using what was already there (with Kaito's popularity being used as justification for the budget for the new helmet prop which was necessary for the form).

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Like, they couldn't tell Bandai not to make a belt if Bandai thinks that it might sell.

If they were actually core of the toyline and Bandai believed there was a market for them they'd get unique designs though. The fact that they were just modifications of existing items heavily points to them being there due to show staff influence rather than an actual Bandai push. It's very telling that both happened under the same producer too.

If anything Grateful probably didn't sell very well, but the Ex-Aid and Build teams wanted that extra belt to make their final bosses more special, which is why we got those repaints. Even Ohmori's first show also had the Banno Driver, although it wasn't part of the main toyline (only getting release at the end of the show) unlike the later ones in Ex-Aid and Build - which just further points to this being mostly producer driven. He already pushed it before, so they integrated it better in the later series when he wanted it again, which is why they were part of the main toyline rather than a show-only story prop that later got merchandising like how the Banno Driver was handled.