At the Beyblade championship in Calcutta on Sunday. Picture by Sanjoy Chattopadhyaya

Gladiators: 600. Battleground: City Centre. Ammunition: Beyblade. Date: December 11.

The popularity of the customised spinning top, inspired by the Cartoon Network show, is rewriting the toy story in town. But, with a tragic twist.

For, stealing is emerging as a pet passion for kids at toy stores. And Beyblade is leading the pack of fun tools disappearing off the racks ? for reasons right and wrong, with methods true and false.

Even as the city played host to the first All India Beyblade Championship on Sunday, toy stores in town were counting their losses adding up over the past few months because of children, ?aged between seven and 13?, stealing toys from retail racks.

?Beyblade has become a massive craze and taken cases of theft by kids to a different level. Almost every day, we have two to three cases reported by our personnel. Besides, many cases go unreported,? says Sidharth Pansari of Crossword.

In most cases, kids caught in the act are found to possess a couple of Beyblades already. The compulsion to add to their collection can be blamed on peer pressure and the lure of constantly upgraded toys. With advanced varieties of the top hitting the market almost every two months, the one already in possession becomes obsolete.

?When one friend acquires a new Beyblade, other friends want to have the same. Parents often refuse to spend again on another Beyblade. So, the child resorts to other means of acquiring it,? says Gautam Jatia, CEO, Landmark.

Psychiatrists refuse to club this under kleptomania. ?The intensive marketing of a particular toy makes it a craze amongst a particular age group... They steal out of impulse,? says Rima Mukherjee.

The blame is less on impulse when it comes to grabbing gaming software on the sly. ?Here, the boy thieves are slightly older. They come in big groups and try sneaking out with CD-ROMS and CDs,? says a spokesperson for Wonderland, in Gariahat.

Meanwhile, the hype of the boy toy keeps growing. The popularity and participation at Sunday?s championship even surprised the distributors of the toy. ?The popularity of Beyblades in Calcutta has been phenomenal. We were flooded with entries, but had to restrict the number to 600,? says Sagarnil Ganguly, spokesperson, Funskool.

But how can the criminal spin-off of the craze be curbed? ?It requires a united initiative from the school and the parents to reduce peer pressure,? says Mukherjee.