Mike W. Bryant
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Nov 20/02) - It's the latest craze to hit toy stores, but good luck finding them before Christmas.

Beyblades, like many children's fads in recent years, hail from Japan. They have their own TV show, and thousands line up in gymnasiums for their chance to do battle in plastic stadiums with spinning tops and launchers.

Eric (right) and Shane Bennett do battle in the latest children's toy craze -- Beyblades. Stores are desperately trying to catch up with fad, along with parents everywhere. - Mike W. Bryant/NNSL photo

Each Beyblade or "bit beast" is unique. Players assemble them to form plastic saw-edged tops and pit them against each other in the quest for Beyblade supremacy.

They've been on sale since late last summer, and the frenzy has been growing ever since.

"Right now, as soon as we get them they're gone," said Wal-Mart's toy department manager Liz Jackson last Friday. "Yesterday we got two boxes in -- only 24 -- but they were gone in 10 minutes."

Jackson says the tops, which retail for $9.96, are back-ordered through Christmas. They also come with a "Beystadium" and launchers but those are just as hard to find.

Paul Bennett, principal of J.H. Sissons school, says they were banned from school grounds because competitions between students were becoming too volatile.

"We got into things where kids were taking them from each other," said Bennett, who will only allow students to bring them to school now for class competitions,

"It was just not being handled very well by the students," said Bennett.

But at Shane and Eric Bennett's house (no relation to their principal) the battle goes on.

Eric, age 10, acknowledged that things were getting a little out of hand at school.

"Sometimes kids play for keeps," said Eric, who began playing the game before his older brother Shane, 13.

Of course, the knocks-offs are out already, but Eric said they don't compare to the real thing.

"There's the fake ones, like Battletops, but these ones got more power," said Eric.

The brothers only have one Beyblade each, but their father Bernie said he's ordered more -- hopefully in time for Christmas. One more fad parents are desperately trying to outpace.

"Ya, they go through all of them, Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh," Bernie laughed.