Tomytec vehicle history

[cteno4]

I was just going over the history of tomytec vehicles with a friend (who is not into Japanese modeling but fascinated with the vehicles) so I thought I would post this. I know many know it, but thought it might be useful to some who might not. It's been brough up before but buried in various threads.

 

Tomytec started making vehicle collection at 1/150 about 14 years ago. At first these were cases of 12 boxes that had one bus, one truck or three cars (later reduced to 2 cars) per box. You knew the 12 vehicles in a set but did not know what was in each individual box so to get all 12 you had to buy a whole case of 12 boxes or buy them individually and just hope you got something you wanted... these were centered on folks collecting them more than for layouts. Each collection would also have a special mystery surprise vehicle that would replace one of the 12 in a case in like 1 in 100 cases sold (never sure what the frequency was of the mystery vehicles). All this Got folks to buy more boxes to get the mystery vehicle.

 

These collections came out at a steady clip for many years, but were not kept in stock, a run was done and the sold out in a few months usually. These were the hay days of Japanese n scale vehicles as they were cheap, nice quality and gobs of chopices! Then tomytec slowly started to slow the collection releases and replace them with small sets of 2-4 vehicles that they sort of keep in stock/production (but not forever). Now collections come out very rarely and most of the available vehicles are thru the smaller tomytec sets so a lot less variety sadly. The bus collection seems to be leading in frequency as there is a big bus fan base out there.

 

Hobbysearch has a pretty good record of all the releases. The regular sets you can usually get or shop around to find. Collections though still usually sell out in a few months. You can still find whole collections or individual vehicles on ebay at a premium. Some to,es when a new collection comes out modeltrainplus or poppendetta will sell individual boxes from a collection and you can randomly see what you get. Poppendetta use to also break open a few cases and sell them as known vehicles for a bit more.

 

http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/search?typ1_c=104&cat=rail&target=ItemSeries&searchkey=The+Car+Collection

 

http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/search?typ1_c=104&cat=rail&target=ItemSeries&searchkey=The+Truck+Collection

 

http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/search?typ1_c=104&cat=rail&target=ItemSeries&searchkey=The+Bus+Collection

 

http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/search?typ1_c=104&cat=rail&target=ItemSeries&searchkey=The+Trailer+Collection

 

Tomytec also did this with buildings collections but has abandoned this and now sells them individually or in sets of 2 or 3.

 

http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/search?typ1_c=104&cat=rail&state=&sold=0&sortid=0&searchkey=building+collection

 

Cheers

 

Jeff

[bill937ca]

Some further info from one of Doug Coster's old blogs.  There a few other pages for Tomytec vehicles but they all have no data.

 

Bandai Working Vehicle

 

https://jnsc.wordpress.com/2011/02/06/bandai-working-vehicle/

 

More Tomytec  ‘Machinami Collection’

 

https://jnsc.wordpress.com/2010/01/17/tomytec-machinami-collection/

 

Tomytec ‘Scenery Collection’

 

https://jnsc.wordpress.com/2010/01/17/tomytec-scenery-collection/

 

Tomytec  ‘People Collection’    

 

 https://jnsc.wordpress.com/2010/01/17/tomytec-people-collection/

  Edited April 24, 2017 by bill937ca

[nah00]

Please Tomytec if you are listening rerelease the Fairlady collection. 

[cteno4]

Yeah bandai thought to compete with tomytec and started the working vehicles truck series before tomytec started trucks (tomytec had started cars and bus collections), but very quickly i think the superior tomytec moulding, detailing and painting blew them out of the water and then around the same time btrains were really taking off so i guess they left the vehicle market to tomytec. bandai's working truck series of tv trucks is probably the most oddly specific the collections ever got, but actually its most detailed and well made of all their collections, finally comparable to tomytec. And they added figures and road sections with their later collections to make little diorama displays that was unique.

 

http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10051925

 

it was also interesting that Maruka, platz/ftoys, and tomytec all did construction vehicles in 2008-2011. kind of swamped the market.

 

then platz/ftoys tried an odd bus/truck set in 2012 and thats been all for them.

 

I kind of thought about the idea of buying extra boxes to put aside for later sale at reasonable prices as i wondered if it would finally end as it did. im really glad i got most all of them when they came out and sad folks now can get the selection that use to be there so cheap and easy! I do shutter when i pack up a small box full of cars and trucks for shows on the layout and i realize how many hundreds of dollars is in a small box of vehicles...

 

Doug and a few of us started to look at setting up a trading system for vehicles around the world so folks could double up on ones they wanted for layouts and get rid of extras. thats why he started compiling all those lists. but it turned out the shipping was not going to make it really work out well. Luckily with the club here we use to have trading/selling sessions at our monthly lunches for folks to get rid of extras. people use to look at us funny when doing this at the restaurant.

 

cheers

 

jeff

[JR 500系]

As some (or many) may know, I love the Tomytec buses and have been collecting them for a long time now, and like Pokémon, trying to catch them all!

 

Yeh I would be the first to jump out and vote for the re-release of the car collections.... I mean, almost every layout will need vehicles, and not just a few of them but quite a lot, even more so if one is trying to make a congested city scene or a crowded traffic jam bridge... The China vehicles just cant make the cut... they're good as fillers in multi-storey carparks but if you place them on anywhere that is easily seen people can really see the difference....Scale tends to be off too when compared with Tomytec vehicles...

 

Really, if any spies from Tomytec is here... hear our voices please!  :)

Edited April 25, 2017 by JR 500系