Mugen generations

[HansNickmans]

I was wondering about the different generations of Mugen kendamas. Since I've seen the plastic bag package and the cardboard boxes, I was wondering what the difference was. Also I've read about the "Mugen 1". Are their different colours in the different generations? Also, I've seen Mugen (not musous) with a small hole in the base cup. Are these just rare ones, or did Kazuma make an entire run?

Anybody have any information on this?

[The Void]

I may be wrong, but what I understand is that...

Gen 1:
- Came in a box
- Had a slightly different bevel to Gen 2 on the tama's string hole.

Gen 2:
- Came in a packet
- Had a slightly different bevel to Gen 1 on the tama's string hole.

The range of standard colours ( + wine & gold) was the same for both.
I'm not sure if some of the rarer colours were restricted to one of the two generations.

Hole in base cup: My intuition is that these would have been customised for Kazuma Iwata's good friend Yusuke Ito. But I'm not sure.

@KendAlex - Have I got anything wrong, do you think?

[KendAlex]

Gen 1 have a sharper rim on the cups
Only a few gen 1 had a hole in the basecup more to put it on a stand like it won't fell easy

Actualy there were 3 generations,
Colors on the second generation were not equal on all colors, like the red and gold were slightly difference, generation 3 did have the nice shine and colors again,

Some of the 2nd gen wern't sticky as the 1st and the 3rd too

[The Void]

Cool, thanks.

[AlexSmith]

I think all of the info in here is correct, just to add in:

- Kotobuki mugens were made without JKA seals, as Iwata was having disagreements with the JKA. They were the last JKA-shaped mugens made. (red with gold speckles, blue with gold speckles)

- Some of the rare colours were produced as gifts for contest attendees (sparkly purple, poke ball, etc), so they would just be confined to whichever generation was being made at that time. i.e. there are not poke ball mugen 1s, and poke ball mugen 2s. It would be one or the other.

- I know Tamotsu also liked having a hole drilled in base cup, I thought that part of the musou design was from his input. I've met Ito-san as well, I don't recall him having bottom cup holes specifically, but I might have just missed that. I received my first mugen from him!