Tomica History
Tomy Co. of Japan (referred to as “Tomy” for the rest of this article) was founded in the late 1920’s and produced various toys throughout its existence, but it’s not until 1970 when they realized the surge of interest in die-cast cars that they started to produce Tomica. Although Tomica of various scales have been made, the term “Tomica” when used alone refers to the 3-inch models. Regular Tomica refers to the mainstream Tomica sold at the regular price—domestic series, foreign series, or common series, depending on the time of release.
If you want buy Tomica model cars, pls go to ToyEast.
Tomica Foreign Series
To share a piece of the toy car market in the other parts of the world, Tomy had great plans of exporting their models early on, and this was done starting in 1974 with the appearance of Tomy Pocket Cars in Canada and the United States of America. But as they found out, Japanese cars weren’t good sellers overseas, so Tomy started producing foreign models in 1976. These models included cars from countries outside of Japan and hence they’re foreign models. American, German, Italian, British, French, and cars from other countries could be found, making the Tomica product line more colourful. For the ones sold domestically in Japan, their packaging was equally colourful. Each foreign series car was packaged in a picture box that showed a flag of the country of that particular car. Since these boxes have the base colours of blue and white, they are also called the blue-and-white box models. At any one time, a total of 70 models were produced under the foreign line, numbered F1 to F70. The same rules for numbering domestic models apply here as well.
Tomy Company Ltd. is Japan's second largest toy manufacturer and the fifth largest toy company in the world. The Tokyo-based company has been producing toys since 1924, including its long-running Tomica series of miniature cars and related fixtures. Tomy is also the producer of the hugely popular Pocket Monsters, the Microtecs toy line. The company holds the exclusive license for toys and other products based on Disney characters for the Japanese market. The company has a number of other licenses as well, including those for the Teletubbies, Star Wars, and Thomas the Tank Engine in the United Kingdom. Tomy also operates a distribution partnership with Hasbro in the United States and Japan. In addition to its Japanese production and development facilities, Tomy has built a global presence, with subsidiaries in the United Kingdom, France, the United States, Hong Kong, and Thailand. Tomy is listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange and is led by Kantaro Tomiyama, grandson of the company's founder. In 2003, Tomy recorded revenues of ¥73.78 billion (US$668 million).