Bandai Juukou B-Fighter Input Magnum reviewHello again people and fans, David Lee here with another exciting toy review. This time, I am backtracking further to history back to the year 1995 for an amazing old school toy. Yes, this is a series in 1995, Juukou B-Fighter or Heavy Armor B-Fighter and the toy I will be reviewing is the standard sidearm that the heroes use in the show, the Input Magnum. This series was dubbed and transferred to the western market just like the Power Rangers but in a name we all are familiar with, Big Bad Beetleborgs. This toy was brought over too. So now, let us take a look at this wonderful toy.
The box is pretty simple with the Input Magnum toy shown with a window on the box. As usual, the leader of the team, Blue Beet, is the main attraction as he is seen at the left bottom corner of the box and is the biggest while the other 2, Green Stag and Reddle are smaller and are shown at the right top corner of the box. The name of the toy should read "Sound Input Power Input Magnum".
The back of the box has the whole manual printed whereby the operating procedures are shown. We can also see that Bandai has provided us with some combo codes to try out. At the left side of the box, the big photo shows and lists down whatever is included in the box which reads to the Input Magnum and a Seal (sticker) sheet.
Basically the Gun looks like this. The keypad has 10 numbers from 0-9 and a final INPUT key to confirm the combo selection. As we noticed on the back of the box, the Magnum only recognises 3-key Combos so if you were to key in more than 3 key combos, it will only take into account the last 3 Key Combos that you did before pressing the INPUT key. From general count, this toy can do over 1000 sounds because the equation goes like 10 X 10 X 10 and with the other sounds like beeping and so forth, it exceeds that. Notice that this is an old toy, the battery compartment is rather large and is located at the bottom of the handle as shown above. It requires 2 AA batteries for its functions to work properly.
The back portion of the gun is mostly empty. No keypads or whatever is seen but only the basic shape of the Magnum.
This toy is made in 1994, a few months before the show actually started airing. Interesting.
This is how we turn this toy on. In the show, the B Fighters would do the same before inputting the Combos and this is truly replicating what's seen in the show.
I am trying a few combos at random but the most prominent combos I have tried are:
110 - Beam Mode
818 - Fire Burst Mode
Do note that the beeping sound occurs every 1-2 seconds when this toy is left idle. I don't see a reason why it needs that but it did come with it.
More combos I am trying and most are based on the back of the box.
As I mentioned earlier, this toy did get a Western Release under the Beetleborgs line with the name Sonic Laser. I do not know the details on the changes of functions BUT the box of the Sonic Laser did mention it can do over 1000 sounds so I am assuming no changes were made. However, a major cosmetic change was made to the Sonic Laser making the Input Magnum being greatly favoured over the Sonic Laser:
If you look closely above, the Sonic Laser is painted in Purple and Red where the Purple replaces the Gray and the Red replaces the Black. This is an eyesore physically but the basic operations still remain. Photo of Sonic Laser is taken from GrnRngr.com's Beetleborg listing line and credit goes to him.
In whole I would say this toy is very very good. Having to do supreme combos is one big thing to toys. I don't see how toys nowadays can do this. Only a few could like the 2005 Sentai Changer Magi Phone and its US counterpart the Mystic Morpher. However getting it cheap is one issue. I got mine quite cheap and came with another piece which goes together with this where I will review later. I would give 4.5/5 stars for playability and value as a whole.
