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[Tsuchigumo550]

An idea hit me today. I've seen a lot of interesting toys over my childhood, and I wondered to myself if I were to design a line of toys for my future kid, what would it be like?

And so I looked through all the old stuff i had lying around in my closet, and an idea began to form.

Toys generally need to have three things. Kids want them, kids continue to want them, and kids can have a good time with them.

I found some kind of mecha thing, with what I vaguely remember had interchangeable parts with other toys in a similar line. They were just cheap, one-shot things, and I remember them just... disappearing.

So, I wondered. How would you turn this into a line? Something that anyone would reasonably not mind buying more on more value than "it's cool"?

So I returned the idea of "mecha", and thought of ways to not only improve the toy but improve it's lasting power.

Take it and make a game.

The mecha has a replaceable head, two arms, and two legs. Other than that, it came with a card with "stats" and a plastic gun that clipped in the hand.

All right, but the stats were arbitrary and there was nothing to do past the rifle. So... what?

Here's where the game comes in.

The idea is that you start with one of these mecha, a single six-sided die, and a card with a QR code.
For the game, the only thing you need is the mecha and die.

The mecha itself is made of two legs, a core, a head, and arms. The die has six sides: head, arm(x2)(right and left), leg(x2)(right and left), and Core.
The die is used to attack and defend: if I'm attacking, and I roll Arm, I attack with my arm or whatever is in my arm and choose where to attack the enemy. They then roll the die, and if it's the part I called, then they defend from my attack. If not, they take damage.

All parts have two numbers on them. This is their HP and the part's attack, so if I have an arm with 3HP and it takes 3 damage, I can't use it anymore. I have another arm, but whatever is in the arm that was lost is useless to me. If I roll for the destroyed part, I can't attack. If I attack with my leg with 2 attack, I do two damage.

The point is to destroy the opponent's core (which has the most HP) or everything but the core (all parts).

---

The QR code is something as a bonus- you can scan it, and it gives you a webpage or something with the "bio" of the mecha it came with. It's just an add-on thing.

---

So, there are also weapons. They do different things, most of them are just direct attacks, but there are other weapons with easy to remember effects. Carrying a shield lets me reroll a defense die, or something similar, such as halving damage.

So let's say I've built my mecha, and I'm playing with some other dude.

My mecha:
Head    2hp 1atk
Arm (L)  3hp 1atk
Arm (R) 3hp 1atk
Leg (L)  3hp 2atk
Leg (R)  3hp 2atk
Core      8hp 1atk

Rifle (Left Arm) 4atk
AEGIS Shield (Right Arm) 4hp Protect 2

vs

Head    1hp 2atk
Arm (L) 2hp 2atk
Arm (R) 2hp 2atk
Leg (L)  2hp 3atk
Leg (R)  2hp 3atk
Core      6hp 1atk

Longsword 6atk (Right Arm)

--
I defend first.
Enemy attacks with Left Arm, choosing Core.
I defend Left Leg, and with my shield, Core.
Enemy attack hits 2 damage to shield.
--

And that goes on until someone loses. The shield is the second roll and takes damage (and therefore can be broken.)

And that's just a simple thing. Packages would be a QR card, the mecha with it, and a die of similar color to the mecha. Parts would come in various colors, each mecha part having up to 4 colors (a fifth for something promotional.) This way, a person can buy the parts they want in the color they want, as nearly all parts have the same kinds of colorations.

Larger sets could have:
-A "double pack" that also contains extra weapons as well as two complete mechas, cards, and die
-A "tournament pack" with four mecha, a random assortment of weapons, qr cards+die plus a special "map" that looks like a birds-eye city or something. Could include rules for four-player play.
-A "Mercenary pack" with one mecha+card+die with a random assortment of weapons.

So, let's take just one model of mecha, let's call it the G2000 Warhound. If I buy three of these in Mercenary Packs, I could get:

G2000 Warhound Tan      + Rifle
G2000 Warhound Crimson + Rifle
G2000 Wahround White    + Rifle
---
Energy Whip
Longbarrel Rifle
Wide Shield

Longsword
Energy Blade
1897 Commisar Sniper(rare weapon, it's a different color + has special design)

Energy Scythe
Rifle
Round Shield
---

The weapons are in a box you can't see into, but the mecha, card, and die is. With other packs, additional weapons are also boxed in, except possibly the Tourney packs.

---

I think that could be good design for a toy line. It's fairly simple to learn, wouldn't require anything but relatively good plastic with durable ball-bearing style joints where parts can be interchanged, and hits a large "male" audience.

[OREOSOME]

I would definitely buy this sort of thing.

[Tsuchigumo550]

Inspiration: http://www.blokcity.com/wiki/index.php?title=5104_Gyro

[Tsuchigumo550]

I may draw out some of the ideas I had on paper later on.

[DeKaFu]

Are you familiar with Medarot/Medabots? It's a video game series instead of a toy, but it's very similar to what you're describing.

The robots in it have four swappable parts: Head, Left arm, Right arm and Legs, plus the Tinpet (base skeleton) which determines gender and Medal which determines stats/level/personality. The parts each have seperate HP and a specific attack or ability, and are targeted seperately. Battles are 3-vs-3 and each robot is destroyed when its head part's HP hits zero (other parts are usually targeted first). It works like you described, in that when each part is destroyed its attacks/abilities are disabled.

The anime and one of the games came out in North America, but the other....20? games were Japan-only. Still, there's in excess of 800 different Medarot designs now, mostly with animal motifs.

The games are RPGs similar to Pokémon, where you're collecting parts and medals instead of individual mons and combining them into customized robots. I believe there was a (Japanese) toy line with swappable parts, too, though I think they were just tie-ins and they didn't adapt the battle system for them or anything.

[Tsuchigumo550]

Are you familiar with Medarot/Medabots?  -snip-

I played the game, yeah. I remember it being awesome.