Japanese Takeda Police Handcuffs - Comparing the REAL police ones to modern toy copy versions

These are Japanese Takeda police handcuffs likely from the 1970s. The design is familiar to many, as a toy handcuff. This design was a genuine police handcuff, long before it was copied by toy manufacturers. There were solid brass ones and steel ones with brass bows. This is the latter.

The design of these handcuffs is very basic and to be honest not that great. It has a nice pin-wheel design that cannot be shimmed, but the double lock is merely a switch which easily and trivially can be switched one way to double lock and the other way to undo the double lock, making them not very safe from police liability.

These have welded chains, no rivets on the back and only 2 rivets or protrusions on the front to prevent the double lock switch going too far.

This design of handcuff is best known as being toy handcuffs and are sold all over the world, using lesser quality parts and lacking security considerations. For example the toy versions are made of more flimsy metal, they have exposed rivets to try and keep the things together and their chains are not welded, which means a strong person could pull or twist on the chains to get out of them. Also often the swivels on the modern toy versions are longer, which makes them more likely to snap.

This pair of actual Takeda handcuffs was used by someone in the Rhodesian BSAP police force. However it is a Japanese handcuff and even has JAPAN stamped on it near the swivels (not sure if I got this on video).

I thought this would be a somewhat interesting video to show you a pair of "toy" handcuffs that are actually not toys and were officially used by police forces and compare them to actual modern day toy versions.

Enjoy!

🧒 Viper Classic Handcuffs - Metal toy cuffs which are "not bad" for what they are

These are "cheapo" handcuffs made by Viper. They are sold as their "Classic" model. Let's face it, they're toys. They are made of decently solid and weighty steel and are very smooth in their action. I had these as a kid, sold under generic no-name brands. They used to cost about £5 from the joke shop in town. They used to make models like this with the lever on the side. But I was always the kid with this version that had no safety lever to open them.

Now, these do feel perhaps slightly better quality than the ones I had back in the day. But the chains are still non-welded and they are not the best for large wrists. Instead of having teeth and a pawl, they have holes in the bow and a wheel with spikes on which act as the closing mechanism.

They have large open keyways that you can drive a truck into, in case you lose the key, so you can jab many potential things in there to get them open.

Very weirdly, this particular design is based off of a REAL Japanese police handcuff. You can tell the old "real" ones apart because they have a pretty solid casing and have no visible rivets. If you want to see what REAL original actual police version of these handcuffs looked like, have a look at these two images: https://i.imgur.com/Hh9ezqt.png

All in all, they are not bad toys. Amongst the most budget handcuffs, they are decent quality. But if you can spring for the more modern style of police handcuff they would be better quality and more secure.

I am not adding these to my collection image or lists, as I only bought these mainly as a "stroll down memory lane", to see from my modern perspective, what I think about these handcuffs. There are even lower budget versions of this which are GARBAGE. I had a pair of black low budget ones I will try and add a card link near the end of the video if you want to see rubbish versions.

Enjoy!