TomyTec: Re-issue

[Guest ___]

Anyone else noticing that TomyTec is releasing all the single issue buildings from the "Building Collection" as single buildings now? My memory is off on this, but it looks as if a few weeks ago TomyTec has an April release date for all the buildings from Collection 7, and just today HobbySearch posted a May release date for the old collection 9 buildings.

[cteno4]

they announced this in jan with bldgs from collections 5, which is what is showing up for april/may release at hobbysearch. i think they have found there is a market for single building kits of what is know after coming out their town collection line. i think collection 5 was the best candidate since they are larger structures. maybe can get more sales of moulds they already have or they are finding the collection strategy is not working as well in the current economy and directed sales may be a better strategy that the luck of the draw collectable or having to buy a whole case at a time.

 

there is no collection 9 of the buildings. last was vol 7. have not seen mention of release of vol 7 buildings as single buildings.

 

they are re-releasing town collection vol 3 very soon here.

 

cheers

 

jeff

[Guest ___]

Ok so it was 3 and 5. I have had the bathhouse on pre-order or a month now. Debating on a few other ones but can't really justify it because I have no idea when I plan to start phase 2

[cteno4]

Collection 3 will be the re-release of the whole set that is in the unmarked boxes so you have to get a full case of 12 if you want to get one of each (actually two of set of 6 in two different color sets). be interesting to see if they eventually start releasing more of the smaller individual structures from the earlier collections as standalones. one problem will be a big increase in the amount of inventory needed! good side is they already have all the design and moulds done so doing more runs is not so expensive for them.

 

cheers,

 

jeff

[Bernard]

Jeff, Aaron & all members,

In the past I have ordered the Tomytec structures, I thought they would be like Greenmax in that there would be more assembly in the model. I like the designs they offer but are all the sets designed to be snap together and simple? Here is a photo of the buildings I bought.

 

Second question, the next photo is an area where I want to build a city, (sorry about the focus I used an old digital camera) I bought the Tomix shops, here's the link http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10009826

and was disappointed in the look, I tend to like structures with more detail, what would be your suggestion on structures to purchase for a city scene and how much would you vary the heights?

[Guest ___]

To be honest, I love the TomyTec stuff. As of today I have the shinto shrine, both rural stations, and the complete temple set that they just released. Have the bathhouse on order, and would like to get a few of the other single releases.

 

Probably the only build sets I can assemble myself without much problem. (I've let my buddy Squid assemble a few of them for me just because it gets him away from the Final Fantasy Online for an hour or two a week when I was still putting in 50+ hour weeks at bp)

 

I had the impression that the Town Collection was a lower grade where as most of the stand alone stuff was HG. At least that was what I had deduced from my visit last year to a couple of hobby shops in Tokyo. Any who, I still think the ToomyTec stuff looks better than ther TOMIX buildings do. I think TOMIX and Kato buildings tend to look too plasticy and shiny where as my TomyTec stuff, looks pretty weathered. (That is minus the Town Collection releases)

 

Don, IMHO, I think a little weathering would make the buildings you already have look a bit more detailed.

 

Jeff, I'm not seeing all of collection 3 being released as a whole, just the individual buildings for sale on HS.

[Martijn Meerts]

The TomyTec collection series is something entirely different from the buildings that Tomix has in their catalogue. Initially, the TomyTec collections were meant as collection items. You'd buy a couple (not knowing which ones), and then trade any duplicated with others, and that way collect the entire series.

 

But yes, the TomyTec collections are excellent, and I tend to buy most of the ones coming out, including their busses, trucks and cars as well.

[cteno4]

The re-release of town collection 3 is on the town collection page on hobby search

 

http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/list/1222/0/1

 

Im a bit embarrassed to say i think i have collected almost every item of the tomytec buildings and scenery elements and most of the vehicles over the last 4 years. Its great stuff, all of pretty much equal quality of good to very good quality and for the price it cannot be beat. really high bang for the buck here. also since they pop together so quickly and require almost no additional detailing they save huge amounts of your time if thats a limiting factor or you find assembly and painting of structures impossible or tedious... they are also great stuff to start a layout with and can be repainted, kitbased, or even just used for parts they are so inexpensive and versatile. the range is pretty amazing also. last year i has started to build a food cart and also was playing with bits to try some cemetary markers and right when i had the food cart about 70% built (just found the right sized jewelry rings for wheels) they announced their food cart scenery series! what had taken several evenings of fiddling to scratch build was there in amazing detail with chairs, figures, etc for $6... took the wind right out of my sails, but they are great additions! its really the golden age of modeling japanese rail with all these items as the variety and bang for the buck is amazing compared to trying to model elsewhere in the world!

 

The tomytec buildings are really little diorama scenes, with weathered paintings, bases, scenery extras, sometimes even figures. The regular tomix and kato buildings dont have all the se extras and the painting is pretty much brand spakin new looking (that can be plastic looking). these require some weathering and the addition of extra scenery parts to make them look like the tomytec stuff. the tomix corner shops are a bit dull, but with a little painting and some simple cardboard/plastic detailing additions they are great starting points for some fantastic structures. ive seen folks do some wonderful things with them with pretty simple additions, painting, weathering. many of the regular tomix buildings are a bit more down the lines of the perceived scenery approach where you are just plunking buildings down temporarily and detail in the whole layout/scene is all perceived. since many layouts in japan are not permanent you see a lot of this more perceived detail approach more than you elsewhere in the world where permanent layouts with details are more the norm. this perceived detail, temporary display is what Japan Rail Modelers used in our current show layout.

 

The tomytec building collections are all of the same quality. the collections started with the Town collections of older, smaller buildings first. the released town collections vol 1-5 over maybe about 4 years time. these were all sets were each a set of 6 different buildings in a case. sets 1-4 had two sets of six buildings with different paint schemes with all the same parts/features. Set 5 were bigger, more modern buildings and just had 8 buildings in a case, so two were random duplicates. As Martijn noted these were done as collector items. all the boxes were printed the same so you did not know what you were getting if you bought an individual box. If you bought a whole case you would get the complete set (or in 1-4 two different colored complete sets). These are a great deal at about $5-7 each shipped and are very detailed with nice wash paint jobs on them and very easy assembly. Many have lots of detailed scenery items inside and out as well as figures. some of the shops have complete interior detail on the first floors! Last year volume 6 and 7 came out with 7 being 12 modern 3 story down town bldgs, and collection 7 is 12 older wooden style 2 story japanese houses and apt bldgs. again both are 2 sets of 6 buildings in different colors. about a year or so ago they started re-releasing the old town collection series. collections 1-3 have now been re-released.

 

about 3 years ago they started releasing the individual buildings, first with the farm buildings, followed by the small factory buildings, then the first shrine set, then houses, then the rr buildings, fishing port, bus depot, then second shirne, now some apartments are due out soon. These are also great quality and the same quality/system as the town collection. each have the same level of details, features and painting, its just some are larger scenes than in many of the town collection. Now they are releasing the buildings of Town collection 5 as single building series items.

 

about three years ago the also started the visual scene collections. these started with series of 12 figures that would go with each of the new individual building sets: first farmers, then factory workers, train workers, passengers, shrine visitors, etc. these are sold in sets of 12 different figures. there are usually 2 or 3 variants of each line of figures, the only difference being the paint job on the figures. these first came out at about 25 cents per figure, which for a good quality painted figure is a great price. the figures are not quite as fine detailed or painted as kato, pressier, or other hight quality figures, but those figures usually start at about $1 per figure, so the tomytec are great bang for the buck and are japanese! really the quality is very good and probably only unacceptable to the really high detail oriented diorama modelers

 

In addition to the figures the scenery collection now includes many different tree kits consisting of plastic armatures and ground foam to glue on them. it also includes fishing boats, park details, catenary poles, street signals, Mikoshi portable shinto shrines, festival stalls, food carts, and soon to come cemetery stones, bicyclists and animal!

 

The last items in the tomytec series are the bus, car, truck and train series. these are all pre-built vehicle models. these are fantastic quality vehicles, especially for the price! these were all being released as collection series in the past where you would get a case of 12 boxes that were all different, but the boxes were the same so it was luck of the draw if you bought them individually. trucks and busses come in sets of 12 different vehicles. cars would come in sets of 12, usually with 4 different models with different paint schemes and some done as police cars and each box has 3 cars in it, thus you got 36 cars in a case. then with car set 5 they were really vans and light trucks and they came two to a box so 24 in a case. then car set 6 which was compact cars it was only 2 to a box with very small cars! the cars were a steal when they were three to a box as they were like $1.25 ea shipped and just about the best detail out there in n scale. even at 2 to a box no one else can touch them on bang for a buck! the biggest line are the busses and these were the first series they did as busses are big fan items in japan by themselves. the truck series have mainly been heavy cargo trucks, with a few odd other things mixed in like fire engines. There are also two trailer collections with mainly container tractor trailors and a couple of flat bed trailers.

 

they are now starting to release some of the cars and light trucks form the released series in packs of 4 vehicles that you can see what you get. the first is three 4 car series from car collection 4 which was 50-60 toyotas. the next will be light trucks/vans from car collection 5 in the spring.

 

my only complaint with the vehicle series is they have focused popular collectable vehicles. this makes sense as they were probably selling the lions share to the collection market and the train market was secondary. what has been sorely missing for japanese scenes are the micro cars, vans and trucks, more sub compact cars and a higher variety of light trucks. these are the majority of what you see in most japanese roads. the really big trucks are usually not seen aroudn towns in city, but only on highways in industrial areas. but i think that is changing slowly as so much of this stuff is finding its way into the train market. looks like tomy is trying to find how they can reuse and repackage as much of what they have done to cover all bases and i think the train market is maybe making up a bigger share of the sales.

 

you can even buy cases (same tomix train cases with foam rubber inserts) for the bus and truck collections to store them in! tomix even has some little backdrop pdfs on their web site you can download and print out for the vehicles and structures.

 

I have never followed the train collection much, but these are mainly trams and light rail cars. i think some are slightly shortened version of the prototype, but i really never paid a lot of attention to these.

 

you can see the whole line of tomytec stuff at hobbysearch from the link above. just scroll down the left nav to the tomytec section and you will see links for all the collections and even the old sold out stuff is all documented well there.

 

more than you probably wanted to know about tomytec! you can see im a tomytec fan...

 

cheers,

 

jeff

[Guest ___]

Psst, Don. Let's steal Jeff's post and drop it in as an article.Add a few pictures and we just used about three or four pages.  ;)

[CaptOblivious]

Psst, Don. Let's steal Jeff's post and drop it in as an article.Add a few pictures and we just used about three or four pages.  ;)

 

You and me, we think alike ;)

[Guest ___]

You and me, we think alike ;)

 

LOL, you were thinking the same thing.

[CaptOblivious]

You and me, we think alike ;)

 

LOL, you were thinking the same thing.

 

Jeff is working this up into an article for Tetsudo, with an eye to doing a regular series :D

[cteno4]

how about Talking TomyTec?! hopefully guest writers in the future!

 

jeff

[Martijn Meerts]

TomyTalk? =)