Kamen Rider • Henshin Belt (変身ベルト)

Popy’s Kamen Rider transformation belts (変身ベルト) began in 1971 with the ‘Hikaru! Mawaru! Henshin Belt’ (光る！回る！変身ベルト) for the first Kamen Rider series. Its central windmill was motorised so that it lit up and spun, after a non-motorised belt from another maker had sold poorly; the Popy belt sold about 3.8 million units in roughly two years. Popy made the belts for the following Kamen Rider series until the 1980 Kamen Rider Super-1 belt, effectively the last Popy-branded one, after which Bandai became the main brand for these toys.