product review: bakugan

this bakugan nonsense has earned an official stamp of approval, even after we got the dvds of the cartoon and watched them last week. the cartoon is really, really... mockable. the first time we popped in the dvd and watched the intro, PRM started cackling uncontrollably at the flimsy premise. it goes something like this:

"one day, all these, like, cards just started falling out of the sky. and we didn't know what they were, so we made up a game with them. but then the game was, like, real and stuff. in another dimension."

then there's the annoying theme song. almost as bad as the boys singing along at the top of their lungs is PRM screeching his version of the lyrics out of the boys' earshot ("this is bakugan!" becomes "it's fucking bakugan!" you get the idea.) following the intro is a 22-minute episode of pokemon, in which badly named creatures that pop out of pokeballs battle each other in a dumbed-down magic-the-gathering-knockoff cardgame. yeah, that's not a typo: i said pokemon. just replace "badly named creatures that pop out of balls" with "balls that pop open and transform into badly-named robot thingies" and you've got yourself an episode of bakugan.

that said, bakugan has several things going for it that make me like it more than i like pokemon.

1. it takes place in the real world. hence, the japanese and american main characters travel the world. never too early to start learning something about geography. and world cultures! for example: all german women wear beer wench costumes.

2. the female characters aren't just a token 1-out-of-5 as on most kids' shows; it's seriously 50/50. including the battling robots! some of the cool battling robots are female! yay! big change from the 80s cartoons i grew up with. and most shows today, unfortunately.

3. one of the robot thingies is addicted to tv cooking shows. this amuses me to no end. they occasionally whip up meals like "japanese squid hamburgers." my kids have a new appreciation of the other 12 aisles in the asian grocery store besides the candy aisle.

4. outside of the tv show, the game itself actually differs quite a bit from the pokemon card game. instead of being entirely card-based like a pokemon battle, a bakugan battle involves laying down magnetic "gate" cards, and then rolling your bakugan onto the field of battle; landing on a magnetic card causes the marble to pop open into a robot, and which card they land on helps to determine who wins the round (along with the inherent abilities fo the bakugan you're battling with, and any special-ability cards you may play from your hand.) it's easy enough that the 5-year-olds can play, and pretty entertaining.

5. magnetic shit is cool. pokemon can't do this!



of course, all bakugan are sold out everywhere, and it ain't gonna lighten up before christmas. i managed to procure a few sets at retail price, plus a few more special edition sets to squirrel away for christmas. check the ebay prices. hell, check the amazon prices 90% of the time - if amazon is sold out, which they usually are, the price suddenly doubles (or more) if you choose to buy it from some 3rd-party amazon seller. insanity, i tell you. i have already carefully explained to the boys the marketing ploy that is "collectibility," in which supply is artificially kept lower than demand, which both causes prices to skyrocket AND increases demand with the exclusivity factor. the punchline: if you get your heart set on a certain bakugan, and it's in short supply, mommy isn't spending $50 on it. they totally understand, are perfectly happy with the bakugan they have, and they're becoming good little anti-capitalists. fuck the man!