Takara Tomy has been teasing something that looks a lot like B-Daman, but it was revealed as a new cross-media toy project called “Bottle Man.” [Thanks, Ryokutya2089.]
For those of you unfamiliar with B-Daman, it is a cross-media series by Takara involving toys that shoot marbles. It was popular in Japan around the mid to late ’90s with the toys, CoroCoro mangas, and anime adaptations. While B-Daman was never as popular outside of Japan, the toys and anime did make it out West via Hasbro and Fox Entertainment.
While B-Daman hasn’t been popular in Japan for quite some time, it’s one of those things that gets brought up every now and again as cool stuff from the Japanese ’90s with Tamagotchi, yo-yos, and so on.
Here’s the recent teaser tweet for “Project BM” from Takara Tomy:
【速報】「PROJECT BM」に玩具のシルエットが出現。丸いものを…射出…している…？
9月15日10時に完全解禁です！ pic.twitter.com/MKfovmOp7q
— タカラトミー@9月15日BM発表 (@takaratomytoys) September 10, 2020
The tweet pretty much made it obvious that it was something related to B-Daman. It even mentioned that the toy’s silhouette appears to shoot something round. Not to mention that it has “BM” and “Shooting Hobby” as hints. Since it looked strikingly similar to a B-Daman toy, a lot of fans thought it meant the return of B-Daman, but it ended up being revealed as “Bottle Man.”
The Bottle Man toys actually look just like a B-Daman toy, but instead of shooting marbles, you can load them up with bottle caps to shoot. It will work in the same fashion as B-Daman by launching from its belly.
Takara Tomy will officially unveil the new toy on September 15, 2020 at 10:00 am JST, according to its tweet, but we got an earlier sneak peek through a design that was recently patented by Takara Tomy. Check out the images below:
Bottle Man Design
The Bottle Man toys will release in Japan on October 24, 2020. It will start out with a lineup of three different models for 980 yen each. While no further information was shared, Takara Tomi revealed that it is also working on something for Switch.
