TakaraTomy

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"Takara" redirects here. For the Generation 1 manga character, see Takara (G1).

Takara!

Tomy!

Superlink!

TakaraTomy (タカラトミー) is a Japanese toy company. They are the producer of Transformers in Japan, and design much of the engineering for Transformers toys. Originally, Takara created the Diaclone and Micro Change toy lines, which were later imported to the US by Hasbro and turned into the Transformers. Since then, Hasbro and Takara have been business partners. They swim in your money every time a new franchise is made. Some other notable toylines produced by TakaraTomy include Pokémon, Beyblade, and B-Daman.

History

Takara before the merger

Takara (タカラ) was originally founded by Yasuta Satō in 1955 as Sato Vinyl.

In 1960 they changed their name to Takara Vinyl. Their name would be shortened to simply Takara in 1966. One of their major successes was "Licca-chan (リカちゃん)", a fashion doll similar to Barbie but only 8 1/2 inches tall, launched in 1967.

In 1970, Takara secured the license for releasing Hasbro's G.I. Joe line on the Japanese market. Dubbed NEW GI Joe (ニューＧＩジョー), the line would soon get a spin-off named Henshin Cyborg (henshin being the Japanese word for "transform"), which in turn would later lead to the original Microman toyline which started in 1974.

The Microman line was relaunched as New Microman in 1981 and would lead to spin-offs such as Diaclone and Micro Change. Hasbro would later acquire the license for releasing toys from both lines on the North American market. The result, dubbed Transformers by Hasbro, would turn out to be a huge success.

After a first test release of the Hasbro toys to a small test market in Japan apparently turned out to be successful, Takara decided to cancel Microman and Diaclone and henceforth started to release Transformers in Japan as well.

This incredibly convoluted chain of licensing, evolving, and re-licensing toy franchises can be used to make the heads of evil robots explode.

Nobuyuki Okude, one of the original Diaclone designers who oversaw the production of the modified toys for Hasbro's Transformers line, would later rise to become Takara's vice president and for a brief time even held the position of the company's president.

Tomy before the merger

Tomy (トミー) was founded by Eiichiro Tomiyama in 1924 as Tomiyama Toy Factory. In 1963 they changed their name to Tomy. Their American branch opened in 1973, with branches following in Canada in 1981 and the UK in 1982.

Two pre-merger Transformers designed by Tomy were Omega Supreme and Sky Lynx, patterned after their Plarail and Zoids toylines, respectively, by designer Junichi Ishikawa (石川順一).

The merger

After a series of commercial failures, May 2005 saw the public announcement that Takara would merge with rival toymaker Tomy. As of April 2006, both companies ceased to exist and made way for the new company, TakaraTomy. Fortunately, Tomy had established a healthy working relationship with Hasbro since 1999, long before their merger with Takara—which is why the merger didn't have any major effects on the established Hasbro/Takara cooperation (including the toy development process).

Oddly, "TakaraTomy" is only the merged company's official name in Japan. For the international, English-speaking world, the merged company is officially simply named "Tomy", for pragmatic reasons (as most of Takara's internationally renowned brands are distributed through other companies, such as Hasbro, outside Japan). Indeed, Tomy is mentioned as the licensor on all Transformers toy product released by Hasbro after the merger.

Despite this, the packaging for Hasbro's Transformers toys released under the Generations banner following the "brand unification" introduced in 2018, which thus far includes the Studio Series and the War for Cybertron Trilogy including Siege, Earthrise and Kingdom, features a very prominent "TakaraTomy" logo on the front side of every packaging along with a "Hasbro" logo of equal size.

On February 6, 2024, it was announced that Chairman and CEO Kantaro Tomiyama will be stepping down to the position of Honorary Chairman of TakaraTomy on June 26, 2024, his son Akio Tomiyama taking over as President and COO (Akio currently as Executive Vice President) and Kazuhiro Kojima will take over as Chairman of the Board and CEO of the company as part of the company's restructuring for the fiscal year of 2024. ^[1]^[2]

Employees

Executives

Kantaro Tomiyama, Representative Director, Chairman & CEO

Transformers brand

Hideaki Yoke, Lead Designer
Tomoya Miyake, Designer
Takashi Kikuchihara, Designer
Takashi Nakase, Designer
Yutaka Tajima, Designer
Daigo Shiraishi, Designer
Hironori Kobayashi, Designer Domestic Product Team
Hirofumi Ichikawa, Freelance designer/artist/writer

Known current Transformers team members

Yūya Ōnishi, Design Team Leader
Kōjin Ōno, Lead Designer, Masterpiece
Takashi Kunihiro, Designer
Hisashi Yuki, Designer
Shogo Hasui, Designer
Takio Ejima, Designer
Ittoku Kuwazu, Designer
Kōki Yamada, Designer
Shuhei Umezu, Designer
Tomoki Tatsumi, Designer

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What's needed: Cross-reference with Category:TakaraTomy designers

Tomy Direct

Tomy has its own label, "Tomy Direct", for releasing imported Hasbro products (such as Star Wars toys) in Hasbro packaging in Japan, similar to Takara's USA Editions. The huge difference is that USA Editions might still sport differences with their Hasbro counterparts, whereas Tomy Direct releases are really just the Hasbro toys.

Since Tomy's merger with Takara, the Tomy division of TakaraTomy has also released various Transformers-related toys under the Tomy Direct label, usually toys which were developed without any input from Takara's design team and/or figures from multi-brand lines such as the Titanium Series (which originally started out as a Star Wars sub-line) and the "Heroes" mini-figure franchise (which includes the Transformers-based Robot Heroes, but also the Star Wars-derived Galactic Heroes, the Marvel-based Superhero Squad and various others).

Those include:

Star Wars Transformers, which are officially a Star Wars property that just "borrows" the name "Transformers"
Their successor, Transformers: Crossovers, which include the Star Wars Transformers and the new Marvel Transformers
Several 6" Titanium Series figures
Various 2007 Transformers movie toys that were developed without Takara's input (such as Ultimate Bumblebee, the various role play accessories, the Robot Replicas, Robot Heroes and the Cyber Stompin' Robots)
The same for the Revenge of the Fallen toyline (Ultimate Bumblebee Battle Charged, Robot Replicas, the role play accessories, Power Bots and the RPM vehicles)

Home video

As well as licensing to third party companies such as Sohbi Kikaku, Takara produced some of their own home video releases in the 1980s and '90s. The two Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Laserdisc sets and the Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers: 2010 Laserdisc set were later repackaged and released by Pioneer LDC when they acquired the license in 1998.

Releases

VHS

Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers: Scramble City: Mobilization (April, 1986)

Contains "Scramble City: Mobilization".

Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers: Heroic Legend Chapter (1988)

Contains "Heroic Legend: Optimus Prime vs Megatron!!", "Heroic Legend: 2010 Wars" and "Heroic Legend: Head On, Master Warriors!".

Scramble City: Mobilization
Heroic Legend Chapter

The following four releases were part of Takara's Video Collection series that ran from 1988 to 1990. The gaps in the tape numbering are due to other releases in the series being based on different properties, such as Mashin Hero Wataru, Legendary Armor Samurai Troopers and Toho's kaiju movies.

V-01 — Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers: Transformers: The World (1988)

Contains the 20-minute recap special "Transformers: The World" plus a S.T.A.R.S. official members badge and 25 character profile cards.

V-04 — Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers: Fight! Super Ginrai!! (1988)

Contains the 10-minute recap special "Fight!! Super Ginrai". (Yes, even Takara confused it with "Fight! Super Ginrai!!")

V-10 — Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers: The Big Book of Masterforce (1989)

Contains "You Too Use the Masterforce to Transform" and "Shūta and Grand's Masterforce Super-Secrets!".

V-15 — Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers: Fight! Star Saber (1989)

Contains the 30-minute recap special "Fight! Star Saber: The Big Book of Victory".

V-01
V-04
V-10
V-15

The Transformers: The Movie - Apocalypse: Be Eternal, Matrix (1989)

Contains The Transformers: The Movie - Apocalypse: Be Eternal, Matrix plus a "Special Data Book".

TAK-006 — The Transformers: The Movie (English language, Japanese subtitles) (November 10, 1989)
TAK-007 — The Transformers: The Movie (Japanese dubbed) (November 10, 1989)

Apocalypse: Be Eternal, Matrix
TAK-006
TAK-007

Laserdisc

C-376 — Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers — Convoy Set (March 5, 1994)

Nine-disc set containing episodes 1-35.

Packaged with the Planet of Cybertron Guide 1 instruction booklet and the Convoy Set Special CD.

D-342 — Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers — Megatron Set (Release date unknown, 1995)

Nine-disc set containing episodes 36-63, plus the bonus episodes "Attack of the Autobots" and "Day of the Machines" (both with optional English audio), the "Exciting Transformer!" TV special, the "Scramble City: Mobilization" OVA and a hell of a lot of commercials and trailers.

Packaged with the Planet of Cybertron Guide 2 instruction booklet and the Megatron Set Special CD.

VSL-1 — Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers: 2010 Set (Release date unknown)

Nine-disc set containing all 30 episodes, plus The Transformers: The Movie as a bonus.

VSL-2 — Transformers: The Headmasters Set (September 30, 1996)

Ten-disc set containing all 38 episodes, plus "The Rebirth" and a bunch of Western TV commercials.

C-376
D-342
VSL-1
VSL-2

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Fiction

2005 IDW continuity

Separate "Takara" and "Tomy" signs adorned Times Square. All Hail Megatron #1

Sector Seven ARG

To control the previous year's leaks about the Transformers to the public, on March 15, 1983, S7 Industries contracted with Takara to make a film about the NBEs the organization was tracking in order to cover up their presence on Earth. This operation was codenamed Hungry Dragon. Sector Seven ARG

Controversy

There's no real nice way to say this, but for much of Takara's history the company mascot was a racist blackface doll named Dakko-chan, until pressure from Japanese civil rights group The Association to Stop Racism Against Black People (黒人差別をなくす会 Kokujin Sabetsu wo Nakusu Kai) motivated a branding change in 1990. As such, a blackface logo can unfortunately be found on Japanese Transformers products up through Transformers: Victory, as well as on various pre-Transformer toylines and as a hidden collectible in Transformers: Mystery of Convoy. (And in one baffling case, printed on a character created well after the 90s.)

Notes

The company uses TOMY COMPANY, LTD as its English name.
TakaraTomy's CEO, Kantaro Tomiyama, is currently also the chairman of Toycard, the joint venture operation behind Toy's Dream Project.
In 1985, 20 years before the merger with Takara, Tomy's US branch registered the name "Scrapper" as a trademark in the "toys" field. That same year, Hasbro released a Constructicon of the same name. Since the market situation back then was still very different from what it is like today, this presumably didn't result in any repercussions for Hasbro.
According to Hasbro Australia representatives and designer Eric Siebenaler, all of the Transformers toys jointly developed between Hasbro and Takara/TakaraTomy are manufactured at factories contracted to the Japanese toy company. This means Takara is indirectly responsible for whatever quality control problems you have encountered with your toys, so you can stop complaining about it being entirely Hasbro's fault.

References

External links

English

Japanese