Tomy Aurora: Is this something special?

[The_Ghan]

I stumbled onto this on ebay the other night.

 

Tomy Aurora.

 

I didn't think Tomix marketed internationally.  Is this something special or rare?  Is it collectable?

 

Also, I was unaware that the 200 series was ever called the "Aurora".  I'd be interested to know the history of this.

 

Cheers

 

The_Ghan

[keitaro]

they have marketed international back in the 90's it's definately one of those look at the manual completely english

 

back in some time tomy bought aurora a slot car company I think they tried to use that brand name to push out some railway though not 100 % sure

 

http://slotmonsters.com/slot-car-manuf-tomy.ashx

[keitaro]

could be also related to them.

http://www.toyadz.com/toyadz/modelmotoring/railmasters.html

 

i do know that i had an aurora race car set when i was a kid and i remeber having tomy on it in small text.

 

There are several models they pushed i would assume that this led to them never going to the international market afterwards.

 

hard to find info on it though

[bikkuri bahn]

Ah yes, Aurora.  They marketed their slot car sets under the label AFX Aurora back in the seventies and early eighties, or at least that's what I remember when visiting Toys R Us back then (in N. America).  Their main competitor was Tyco, which many of you likely know was also a big toy train set manufacturer/distributor.  My best friend and I always derided Tyco for its cheapness and lack of fine detail: Tyco is Cheapo, we'd say.  For us Athearn and AHM were the top drawer stuff. However, Tyco's slot cars seemed OK, they always had elaborate spreads in the JC Penney catalog (or was it Sears?), with numerous racing sets- the stuff of schoolboy Christmas wishes...

[jappomania]

I stumbled onto this on ebay the other night.

...

Is this something special or rare?  Is it collectable?

...

 

Hi Ghan!

no, it's not special or rare collectable item, it's a normal Tomix 200 first (really old) release inside renamed box

(Tomix original code 92013).

There is some difference between this and the last release (cream/green tone, different simplified boogies) so is not a good idea to buy it if you wanna complete the train with add-cars, the last production is expensive and hard to find but the old (1982-1989) is impossible, especially in good conditions.

also, the green paint used in the first production sometime present cracks

good for kitbashing (for me), sometime on Yahoo you find this old release around 4-5000JPY

 

ciao

Massimo

[Bernard]

Aurora Model Motoring slot cars were made in Hempstead, NY very near where I grew up....My brother's best friend Jesse got a summer college job at the factory and would come over to the hose with model slot cars for me....I thought Jesse had the best job. I believe the company was bought up by Tomy and moved to Japan.....once this happened the factory in NY closed. You don't see the Aurora brand anymore.

[Davo Dentetsu]

As mentioned previously, still used in the Aurora AFX slot car range.  For years, the range was pretty stagnant and didn't change much, but lately they've introduced a fair amount of new things in the catalogue.

 

Would be cool if they did a similar thing to Kato and used Aurora as some sort of US outline offshoot alongside Tomix's domestic operation.

[cteno4]

They are decent trains and you can pick them up very cheap on ebay pretty often. It actually was my first bullet train as i saw it really cheap on ebay and thought i have to look at these. picked up a second set to make a longer consist when i saw one going for way way to cheap one day (like $30).

 

jeff

[The_Ghan]

Thanks for the info guys, especially jappomania ... as usual, an encyclopedia when it comes to Japanese N-scale!!! 

 

I won't be buying ... because I just posted a copy of my current roster in another thread and nearly had a heart attack.

 

I also had slot cars in the early 1970's.  My memory is not clear on the brand, but I thought it was Scalectrix.

 

Cheers

 

The_Ghan

[Davo Dentetsu]

I also had slot cars in the early 1970's.  My memory is not clear on the brand, but I thought it was Scalectrix.

 

Scalextric dabbled a bit in the small size cars, but the majority falls into 1/32 scale.  Aurora AFX and Tyco are classed under HO scale racing (think it differs from HO scale trains, somewhat.  Figure that out if you can...)