Top 10 Anime Made to Sell Toys

Top 10 Anime Made to Sell Toys

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New figures? New Games? New Trading Cards? Just take our money. Welcome to WatchMojo.com and today we’re counting down our picks for the Top 10 Anime Made to Sell Toys. For this list, we’re looking at Anime that are both gateway titles for younger Anime viewers and have narratives that are fitted to promote a toy line.

In this Anime, a group of friends travel to New Vestroia, an alternate dimension, in order to save the world of the Bakugan from extinction. The show found meteoric success, despite its product being on the confusing side. Essentially, players would battle by launching small spheres onto magnetic cards. This would cause the spheres to open up and reveal monsters. They’d then flip over those cards to see its effects… Confusing, right? Well, the show handled these battles a lot differently, however, and was much easier to digest.

It may be a new series but it’s already cemented itself as one of the most successful children’s series in anime history. Focusing on Yokai, monsters from Japanese folklore, Nate and his companions Whisper and Jibanyan aim to solve mysteries and befriend local spirits. Much of its success spawns from the video games, but a plethora of toys such as the Yokai Watch, medals and plushies have begun to fill store shelves. The franchise is starting to make tracks in the west, but given its Japanese-mythology-heavy-plot, it’s unsurprising that it hasn’t quite reached the heights it has in Japan.

A far off future where you get to pilot your own giant mechanized beast and go on tons of adventures? Yeah, this is pretty much every kids fantasy. The series combined 2D animation with awesome 3D robot battles – and it worked surprisingly well. The number of mecha featured in Zoids borders on the hundreds for a model line that rivals Gundam. It also helped that it had an awesome opening theme…what was this show called again?

Ever wanted to build your own set of Rock Em, Sock Em Robots? Medabots might just be the Anime for you. While there are plenty of Medabots who serve the needs of humans, we all know we just want to see them fight each other. While it would be cool to own a version of Ikki Tenryo’s champion partner, Medabee, it would be a bit more fun to make our own Metabot from scratch. And the toy line let you do just that, with a ton of different model kits and action figures with interchangeable parts. The possibilities were endless.

#6: “Gundam Build Fighters” series (2013-15)

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Build Fighters brings together the best of both worlds of the franchise: the Anime and the Model Kits. Gunpla, or Gundam Plastic Models, have been a huge deal in Japan since the original series. The anime adds a new element to the mania, allowing builders to show off their models and put them to action. Models from all across the Gundam mythos appear here, so there’s no shortage of fan favorites. The show managed to do what it intended by bringing in a new generation of model builders.

#5: “Digimon” Franchise (1999-)

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Riding off the success of Pokemon, Bandai attempted to make their own monster evolving and battling series. Set in the digital world where these creatures run free, the young digi-destined fight against all manners of evil. Of course, the series spawned all the figures, plushies, cards, and video games a kid could want. But it’s product line also took influence from Tamagotchi by creating a line of digivices for raising your own digimon. Even after all this time, Digimon continues to find major success.

#4: “Beyblade” Franchise (2001-)

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Spinning tops. Who’d have thought they’d be so successful? Well, Beyblade proved that possible. In this universe, spinning top fights are the Most Important Thing Ever. There are even tournaments to take these clashes to an even grander scale. The prospect of recreating these duels was exciting for kids, but it wasn’t too soon before they realized giant beasts wouldn’t come out of them. Either way, getting the entire set of beyblades, launchers, arenas and bit beasts was still a treat. We’re not sure how they did it, but they made spin tops cool.

The war between the Autobots and Decepticons has seen many different visions, from the classic 80’s series, to Armada, Energon and Cybertron. As such you’d expect one of the most expansive toylines of everyone’s favorite Robots in Disguise. Whether it’s the classics like Optimus Prime and Megatron, or any of the Dinobots, fighter jets, cars, cassette tapes, Helicopters or combiners - if you ever feel like collecting these bad boys your wallet is gonna take a hit.

#2: “Yu Gi Oh” franchise (1998-)

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The story of Yugi Muto, and his Egyptian counterpart, partaking in battles for the fate of humanity…using…trading cards… caused kids to head out to stores in droves to create their own powerful decks. It now stands as best selling card game of all time – even above magic the gathering. And new installments to the franchise continue to be made. But for our money, the original series pitting the king of games, Atem, against the king of douchebags, Kaiba, was the best.

#1: “Pokemon” (1997-)

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Almost two decades after it first appeared, Pokemon has continued to churn out hundreds of little monsters for Ash Ketchum to collect on his quest to become the very best. With each new iteration for the Anime, based on the best-selling video game, new Pokemon are added to the ever-expanding roster, ripe for toy shelves around the world. From plushies and action figures to just about anything you can think of, fans, young and old, have attempted to catch ‘em all. Do you agree with our list? Which Anime’s merchandise do you collect? For more product-placement Top 10’s published daily, be sure to subscribe to WatchMojo.com.