What to Know About Collecting Kamen Rider Saber Merchandise

With the next Kamen Rider season, Kamen Rider Saber, just a couple weeks away, Team TokuNet writer Malunis covers the toyline’s Wonder Ride Books and what to know about collecting them.

First and foremost, it’s important to know the price of, and limitations of, the key items – every year, the main question is whether these gadgets will make sounds, or if they will simply trigger sounds on the main transformation belt.

In a blog post on Bandai’s DX Kamen Rider toy site, they provide details on the latest CSM reveal, as well as talk about the differences between Wonder Ride Book releases.

To put it into context, the DX Wonder Ride Books feature some small amount of sounds built-in. Their main draw is the inclusion of a story page when the item is activated, flipping open to a set of pages, one with text and one with an illustration – a sound is included that provides the narration of the Wonder Ride Book’s story. Placing it onto the DX Seiken SworDriver, the blade is drawn and a new page opens, revealing the Rider/form and playing the transformation sound on the SworDriver.

The DX Wonder Ride Books are being sold for 1,000 Yen each.

Comparatively, the candy toy releases are much simpler. They do not feature the story page or any sounds at all, they simply flip open for the transformation. The DX Seiken SworDriver provides all the sound effects. Due to the lack of electronics, they are being sold at a much lower price, going for 360 Yen each, as opposed to the DX releases’ 1,000 Yen.

The Wonder Ride Books mainly operate using what Bandai calls contactless tags, also known as RFID. Their candy toy site provides a list (seen above) of what sounds the different releases have, though it is more accurate to say that the DX release merely provides bonus sounds that are not programmed into the belt itself. In either case, there is an RFID scannable built into the items.

At the time of writing, the gashapon merchandise for Saber has not yet been revealed, but Bandai has coined the term “Collectible” to refer to the key items that have no sounds, making specific mention that it applies to candy toy, gashapon, and campaign items. So far, the spine of the Wonder Ride Book provides a clear indicator that it isn’t a DX release, as the spine uses fewer parts and only partially black as a result.

The other thing of note for the Wonder Ride Books are the Legend Rider items that have been present every year since Kamen Rider W. This series started off with an initial wave of candy toy collectibles that included the Metsuboujinrai Monsters Wonder Ride Book, and the A.I.M.S. Animal File Wonder Ride Book. As a special campaign item for those getting the DX Seiken SworDriver, the Hiden no Hiden Monogatari Wonder Ride Book rounds out the trio of Kamen Rider Zero-One items.

First off, this provides a simple introduction to the categories of Wonder Ride Books: God Beast, Animal, and Story respectively. There is a graphic on the cover to indicate which slot of the SworDriver these book categories go into. These categories are mainly relevant to the main fiction, however they have chosen to apply it to the Legend Rider items as well.

At least in the case of these Legend Rider items, there are unique transformations in place for how many are being used at once. Bandai made sure to explain that if all three are used on the belt, a special transformation is played.

As of writing this, it is not know to what extent Legend Rider items will be in the toyline at large, or if each series will receive this level of attention.

Source: Bandai