The Secret Behind Goku’s Color-Changing Dragon Ball Strap

Son Goku Super God Change Strap — Dragon Ball Super: Broly Novelty (2018)

This is a small PVC figure of Son Goku on a strap fitting — the keychain and phone charm format that became a fixture of Japanese character merchandise through the 2000s and 2010s. What sets it apart from a basic figure is the name: “Super God Change Strap,” and what that name implies. Packaging imagery shows Goku rendered in both blue-green and red hair alongside the word “COLD,” strongly suggesting the figure uses thermochromic pigment to shift between his Super Saiyan Blue form and his Super Saiyan God form depending on temperature. The color-change mechanism likely activates through contact with cold air or water — a tactile, hands-on translation of Goku’s in-universe transformations into a physical gimmick. The packaging is an OPP bag, the lightweight clear plastic sleeve typical of promotional novelties rather than boxed retail toys. A date printed on that packaging — December 14, 2018 — matches exactly the Japanese theatrical premiere of Dragon Ball Super: Broly, confirming this as a film tie-in piece.

A Film Premiere at the Peak of Dragon Ball Super

Dragon Ball began as Akira Toriyama’s manga in Weekly Shonen Jump, serialized from 1984 to 1995, before growing into one of Toei Animation’s most enduring global franchises. Dragon Ball Super, the TV anime sequel, aired from July 2015 to March 2018 — the franchise’s first proper continuation in roughly eighteen years. The television series had already concluded by the time this strap was produced, but Dragon Ball Super: Broly opened in Japan on December 14, 2018, and went on to earn approximately 4 billion yen domestically — among the highest box-office results in the franchise’s history. In North America, the film drew roughly 9.8 million dollars in its January 2019 opening weekend. It was standard practice during Dragon Ball Super’s run to attach promotional novelty items to premiere dates, distributing them through cinemas, anime retail chains like Animate, bookshops, and convenience stores. The strap’s simple packaging and format fit that distribution model closely. The two forms it depicts are central to Dragon Ball Super’s story: Super Saiyan God, with its red hair, is the form Goku first achieves by concentrating the power of six righteous Saiyans — introduced in the 2013 film Battle of Gods and carried forward through the Super series. Super Saiyan Blue, formally Super Saiyan God Super Saiyan, combines that divine power with the classic Super Saiyan state, producing the blue-green hair most associated with Dragon Ball Super. Goku’s outfit on the figure — a blue hooded jacket with “SAI” lettering across the chest — resembles the casual survival jacket he wears in the Broly film, suggesting the design was tailored specifically to that movie.

The Japanese Character Strap Tradition

The character strap is a distinctly Japanese format. During the mobile phone boom of the early 2000s, miniature figures on strap cords became a ubiquitous accessory clipped to flip phones across Japan. The format outlasted the transition to smartphones, enduring as a recognized collectible and desk piece. Thermochromic color-change figures have their own tradition within Japanese toy culture — Bandai and others built product lines around temperature-activated variants, using the mechanism to represent character transformations in a directly physical way. Applying that approach to Goku’s two god forms, on a piece timed to one of Dragon Ball’s most commercially significant theatrical releases, is a good example of how Japanese promotional merchandise connects a specific cultural moment to a tangible object. Items distributed as domestic novelties tied to premiere dates generally did not reach international markets through any standard distribution path, which is why pieces like this are more commonly encountered through direct import from Japan.