Beyblades article from The New York Times

[Zeemo]

This is a pretty good article showing that spin tops are popular with kids today.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/22/garden/beyblades-a-japanese-phenomenon-invade-american-homes.html

[the Earl of Whirl]

It's very interesting that you found the Beyblade article at this time.  I just spotted some of the youngsters at our church pre-school with them.  When I walked through and prepared to spin them with my fingers they yelled "Stop!  Stop!  You have to use the power strip".  They seemed seriously amazed that I could spin them with my fingers.

Anyway, I now have someone to spin Beyblades with....in my very own building!   

[czyoyo]

Thanks for sharing!

I'd like to throw my Giulia into the bowl stadium thing and see if it could out-spin a bayblade

[Zeemo]

I bought a set of them some time ago and the stadium was really low quality.  A large wooden salad bowl or a wok might work better.  It is good to see that kids are getting into tops.  Last Sunday I was performing some tops for a group of cub scouts and they mentioned seeing the scene from Titanic.  One kid noted that I the tops I was using were made of plastic and not wood.
I said that "the good news is that both of them would float.

[ta0]

The new Beyblade World Champ, crowned this past weekend in Toronto, is 11 year old Ryo from Japan.



The kid to his left (right on the photo) is 11 year old Zakiah from the US who was second.  Third was Neil from the Philippines, just 9 years old.  I watched the semifinals and finals and the Japanese kid looked like he had no doubts he was going to win. It was a little heart breaking to watch the 10 year old New Zealand champion cry after losing and getting fourth place.

National Champions from 25 countries, ranging in ages between 8 and 14 years old, competed. The videos of the battles are . . . not very exciting    www.beyblade.com/beybladeworldchampionships

You would think that this generation of bladers is primed to upgrade to our spintops!

[jim in paris]

"You would think that this generation of bladers  is primed to upgrade to our spintops!"
from what i've seen last weekend with the beyblade tournaments at the festival ,it's a great launching ramp for our spintops
the kids there, really enjoyed playing on the pavement , with hard throws , jumps and shouts .. it seemed to me that the beyblades do not provide enough physical exercice and it was obvious with the youngest players who got tired of waiting for their run, had a fun time throwing tops....Abdul' s words of advice and encouragements were of course a plus , because he has a killer throw and an undepictable "indian" way of explaining things ... (doesn't speak french though .. )

jim

[the Earl of Whirl]

I walked by our preschool this morning and there was a throwing arena with a bunch of beyblades in it.  Brenner is off school today (because of the snow) and brought his equipment to keep him busy throughout the day.  He is really into it and gets the others going.  Sadly, none of them came to our top festival last year.  But Brenner is listening to my sales pitch and may be ready to attend this year.

I have lots of hope for this group of kids.  After all, they do make tops all the time out of legos!

[jochs12]

Do you have any Beigoma's to introduce to them?  I don't know how preschool safe they would be but I think they would get a kick out of them!  I'm sure legos could be launched in the same manner, but I don't know how they would hold together with the additional centrifugal forces.

[Dick Stohr]

Found this example of a bayblade arena that we might think about for top battles.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=NtFOxA7EAhE#t=31

[ta0]

Ha! Love it!

Eventually we should have our own stadiums.  Something like this: