The Japan-based Tomy was founded on February 2, 1924 as Tomiyama Toy Seisakusho by Eiichiro Tomiyama. It was best known for its toy airplanes for a few decades before the company changed its name to Tomy during the '60s, at which time it also opened offices in the United States and Europe. Tomy published video games from the '80s through 2010 as well; the last game it released is Naruto Shippuden: Clash of Ninja Revolution III for the Wii. In 2006 Tomy merged with another big toy maker (and former video game publisher) in Japan, Takara. I mentioned Takara previously when I made a Transformers video as Takara is responsible for creating the toy robots that Hasbro brought to the U.S. and re-branded as the Transformers. Being the more recognizable name world wide, the post-merger company kept Tomy as its name in all locations except Japan, where it is called Takara Tomy.
All of the toys I'm sharing in the post/video are from the mid to late '70s and early '80s. My favorite Tomy toys are the wind-up characters that you simply wind up and place on a hard surface (or in water) to see them move. A few items are games of skill; some require winding and some are small pocket games. One toy is an amusing sentence maker where you shake the item a bit to mix up plastic squares with words on them and then jiggle the item to get five squares to drop into a window and form a silly sentence. I've also got a few Pocket Cars and accessories from Tomy's die-cast brand that is named Tomica, itself a spin-off of the company's Tomica World trains. Many of the toys with internal mechanisms no longer work but I still find them a pleasure to view. Electronic toys like the ferry can probably be repaired with a new motor though I don't think it is possible to repair the wind-up toys as they are not meant to be disassembled.
Individual Wind-Up Toys
Robots (1977)
Mickey Mouses and Plutos (1977)
Dolphin, Penguin, & Turtle (None have a copyright on them;
the penguin is marked No. 4)
Ski Streak Racing Team 351 (1978)
Bumbling Boxing
Hop-A-Long Hoopster (1981)
Skill Squares
Rescue Copter and Shootin' Gallery
Rescue Copter and Shootin' Gallery
Tomy Pocket Games
Feed the Frogs (1977)
Bi-Plane Battle (1978)
Don't see a name on this one; I'll call it Race Track (1975)
Sentence Nonsense (1975)
Pocket Cars & Accessories (Tomica Die-cast)
American Truck (1978), Toyota Type HQ15V (1978),
Alpine Renault A310 (1978), Pontiac Firebird Trans Am (1978),
and Ferrari 308 GTB (1977)
Conveyer
Crane
Paint 'Em Perfect Paint Shop
Road Mates Auto Ferry
The ferry is battery operated and is not actually meant to be placed in the water. The wheel on the top is used to rotate the wheels on the bottom that are powered by two "C" batteries.
Tomy Pop Cycle
The racer is missing his legs!
Thanks for visiting the blog and I hope you enjoyed this look at some Tomy toys.
-Jonathan
Takara's Penny Racers which also appear in the video.
Back in 2017 I tried to jam all of my Tomy items into one video but it turns out I have a few more, including three art sets from the late '70s/early '80s. Being Halloween, the primary focus in the video is on the Mighty Men & Monster Maker set. This one was my toy when I was a kid along with the much smaller van set, whereas Fashion Plates was my sister's and I'm not sure I ever used it until I did for this video post. All three sets work the same way: mix and match plastic plates, put a piece of paper on top of them, and then rub a special crayon over the plates to create an image. Images can be colored with the pencils that were included in the larger sets or kids can use any other art supplies. The backs of some plates contain patterns that can add more detail to a creation during the coloring phase, such as scales on a monster's skin or a floral design on an article of clothing.
The Mighty Men & Monster Maker (1979) features a total of 18 plates with head, upper body, and lower body parts to select from. As the name suggests you can make monsters but also "mighty men" which are basically superhero types. Of course, since parts can be mixed users can place a human head on a lizard body or a monster head on a Superman-like body. Parts cannot easily be mixed between sets, however, as they are all different sizes. Fashion Plates (1978) offers 15 plates, and it has both individual head and upper body plates as well as combined head and upper body pieces to match with a lower body plate.
Little Van Goes is a miniature set and I'm unsure of the year as I could not locate a copyright on the box or toy. The box still has a price on it so we can see it originally retailed for $4.95 at Service Merchandise and was discounted to $3.27 at the time of purchase. This set is about creating passenger vans by combining front, middle, and rear plates that are stored in a removeable tray. I'm wondering if Tomy chose the name to state that children who play with this are getting their start to become an artist like Van Gogh, or maybe not.
Looking around eBay I found a few other related items. Tomy made a Fashion Plates add-on kit simply titled More Fashion Plates, a 1987 edition of Fashion Plates, another fashion related toy for making paper dolls called Kimberly Kut-Outs, and a greeting card set called Great Greetings. There is also Hot Styles Fashion Plates (1992) from Hasbro and five years ago Kahootz released Fashion Plates and Action Plates which are nearly identical to Tomy's. I'd guess that Hasbro worked with Tomy to bring new versions to the U.S. but I've no idea if Kahootz officially licensed anything. It might have copied the idea and made its own original plates or purchased the rights as it did bring back Spirograph and Lite-Brite in the last decade as well.
For the phots and scans you'll see I am missing the pencil box (and most pencils) for Fashion Plates and only have documentation for the Mighty Men & Monster Maker set. The box for Fashion Plates is a mess too as it spent a lot of time in a basement which shows. I was pressed for time and did a rush job on coloring so the images I made are sloppy but I at least wanted to provide some examples outside of the video.
