Beyblade!

I’ve been here in Malaysia for eight months already (!) so maybe I’m out of touch with what’s happenin’ on the playground back in the States. But I can tell you what is on the minds of every 4- to 7-year-old kid I’ve met here: BeyBlades! What’s a beyblade? To my son, “A beyblade is when you get your beyblade and you fight ‘em and you see whose is powerful. Mines is powerful!”
It is a spinning top, gasing in Malay, that you battle your friends with. There’s no batteries necessary, they’re not easy to break, and a kit of a top, a ripcord and a spinner only costs 2.50RM. By contrast, a single old GI Joe retails for 20RM+! That’s a starter kit of course, and you can trick them out endlessly from there: longer ripcord, arena, heavier weight ring. It’s a great toy. In fact, it’s not just the preschool set; kids as old as 10 or 12 play too. One of the cooler accessories is a weight ring with little bits of flint embedded in it. A good collision and the sparks will fly, literally.
Now I’ve been told that these beyblades are really just a new version of an old kampung favorite, the wooden top with a nail embedded point-down for spinning on. Those are spun with a length of string, and can be similarly tricked out with broken glass, fearsome war paint and so on. Good fun too, I’m sure, though I think it would take a little more dexterity than a five-year-old has.

About this entry

You’re currently reading “Beyblade!,” an entry on Bin Gregory Productions

Published:: 08.26.03 / 7pm

Category:: Malaysia

Briefly

Anwar Ibrahim and the Opposition: Malaysian Seeks End to Decades of Firm Rule - a pretty decent roundup of political developments in Malaysia, from the New York Times.

The Spiritual Aspirant: Sidi Khalil Moore will be in Singapore conducting a workshop for The Spiritual Aspirant, to be held 27 June to 5 July. I had the pleasure to hear Sidi Khalil speak in Detroit back in 2002 in conjunction with the US tour of Habib Ali Al-Jifri. I regret I won't be able to make the short trip across the South China Sea to attend, but I recommend it to anyone in the area. The workshop is being sponsored by Simply Islam, under the capable hands of some of the fine people who put on the Journey to Ihsan event a couple years ago, which I did attend and enjoyed immensely.

Collapse Preparedness: The transition from the USSR to the republic of Russia was a catastrophic event for the people who lived through it. The eventual (imminent?) collapse of the US will be much much worse, warns Dmitry Orlov. The USA has a Collapse Gap. Orlov realizes

that some people will react rather badly to having their country compared to the USSR. I would like to assure you that the Soviet people would have reacted similarly, had the United States collapsed first. Feelings aside, here are two 20th century superpowers, who wanted more or less the same things – things like technological progress, economic growth, full employment, and world domination – but they disagreed about the methods. And they obtained similar results – each had a good run, intimidated the whole planet, and kept the other scared. Each eventually went bankrupt.

Valuable lessons on what to expect and how to prepare follow. Read it yourself, but the condensed advice is this: Live on the margins of society. One encouraging sign that Americans are picking up the skills they will need to survive: haggling at the mall.

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graceshu 08.26.03 / 9pm

i wanted to get a GI joe for my ex…. boys never grow up.

nnydd 08.27.03 / 2am

Maybe I am a little bit conservative, but with old wooden ‘gasing’ you can break your opponent’s into halves ( that is the other use of that nail), and that’s half the fun of it. Having a five-year-old playing together is better, since he becomes you easy victim.. ;P

yasmine 08.27.03 / 5pm

lol I never see a little kid’s toy without thinking about how awesome it would be to have one of my own. A toy, I mean.

Fina 09.29.03 / 10am

I think my mom and I are (almost) the most updated adults on whatever is the ‘in’ thing for kids nowadays - including Beyblade, trading and playing cards, sticker books, and tamiya cars. Maybe mom and I spoiled Aimin (my 9-year-old brother) too much with those things. btw - you should watch Beyblade cartoon on TV3 every Sunday. Oh, did I tell you I watch cartoons and read Dragonball comics as well? Just because….
And yeah, mom and I did suggest Aimin to battle my grandfather with his gasing

rasheed 10.03.03 / 2am

hello first of all weight discs are not weight rings
the ones in the picture are king size goodday

karen Banke 12.16.03 / 4pm

My son, Nicholas, is six and he and his friends at school are quite enchanted with the beyblades. It has caught on like a storm here. Do you have some history on the game?
Karen

I forgot to mention- I am here in Santa Rosa california.

Bin Gregory 12.16.03 / 7pm

I don’t have any history really. But one thing I’ve noticed: It used to be that cartoons for kids would be fantasy where the actors were toys you could go out and buy. This was bad enough - you could say the shows were just long commercials. But with Beyblade and Speed Racer and others, now the cartoon is about really cool kids playing with the toys on TV. I don’t know what to make of it, except to cynically assume that someone has done the research showing this method moves more product.

jay 02.22.04 / 12am

kids under the age of 8 should not have beyblades there to young they could easily get hurt ,and the BBA(BeybladeBattleAssosition)say that people under that age 8 should not have them .Thats the rules

Adrian 05.20.04 / 4pm

The Ways that beyblade is mightg could hurt if you are under 10 for metal series.