Tomy

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Tomy Company, Ltd. (??????????, Kabushikigaisha takaratom?, Takara Tomy) is a Japanese entertainment company that makes children's toys and merchandise. It was created from a merger on 1 March 2006 of two companies: Tomy (founded in 1924 as Tomiyama, changing the name to Tomy in 1963) and long-time rival Takara (founded in 1955). The company has its headquarters in Katsushika, Tokyo.

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History and corporate name

The company made a pragmatic decision of which name to use after the merger, deciding to use "Tomy" in international subsidiaries and "Takara-Tomy" in Japan. They came to this decision because Tomy had built considerable brand recognition internationally, with the majority of Takara's international hit products (Microman, Transformers, Battle Beasts, Beyblade, B-Daman etc.) having been sold and branded by other toy companies such as Hasbro. They also considered the financial cost of changing the name to be too much.

One of the editorial policies of many Western business publications is to ignore merger declarations and declare that one company is being bought by another. Therefore, in much of the Western media, the Takara-Tomy merger was characterised as a 'take-over' of Takara by Tomy. This assumption may have been made because several years of losses had put Takara in a financially weakened state at the time of the merger, although Takara did have significantly higher sales than Tomy. However, the management of Takara and Tomy had discussed merging several times, including at times when Takara appeared stronger. Under Japanese corporate law, the move was a merger of both companies on an equal basis.

There has been much post-merger media speculation about the control of brands from the Takara-Tomy merger. Much of this arose from the new use of a "TOMY" copyright on all packaging, including former Takara brands shipped by Hasbro. However, that was simply the result of a practical decision to use only the Tomy name in international subsidiaries. In Japan, Takara-Tomy continues to use both Tomy and Takara as distinct brand names on toy ranges which originated in each separate company, and most new toy ranges or stand-alone products now carry the new Takara-Tomy brand.

Takara purchased a majority stake in Tatsunoko Production in June 2005. The studio then became a complete subsidiary of Takara-Tomy, following the March 2006 merger. Tomy UK was founded in 1982 for the sale and distribution of Tomy products in Europe, and has brought toys such as Zoids, and games like Pop-up Pirate, to the West with great success. Tomy UK's slogan has traditionally been "Trust Tomy". In 2006, Tomy UK launched a website on which consumers can buy online from Tomy's catalogue. In early 2011, Takara-Tomy acquired RC2 Corporation and RC2 sub-brand, Learning Curve, which included The First Years, Lamaze, and Compass.

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Products

Takara-Tomy has manufactured a broad range of products based on its own properties which include, from the Tomy side: Tomica, Plarail, Zoids, Idaten Jump, Nohohon Zoku and Tomy branded baby care products, and, from the Takara side: Space Pets, Choro-Q (a.k.a. Penny Racers), Transformers, B-Daman, Koeda-chan (a.k.a. Treena) and Microman. The merged Takara-Tomy also produces and/or sells a wide variety of toy and game brands under license, such as Thomas & Friends, Disney, Pokémon, Naruto, The Game of Life (a.k.a. Jinsei Game), Rockman (a.k.a. Megaman), Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch, Kirarin Revolution, Sugar Bunnies and Animal Crossing. Tomy's rights to these licenses vary by region. One of the first examples of product synergy for the merged company was the combining of Takara's Jinsei Game (Game of Life) license and Tomy's Pokémon license to produce a Pokémon Jinsei Game.

Tomy sells many products worldwide, including baby and pre-school toys, baby monitors, mechanical and electronic games, consumer electronics, children's arts and crafts products, and a vast range of toys suited to girls or boys. They make a large selection of Disney, Pokémon and Thomas the Tank Engine merchandise. They also publish videogames in Japan (mostly based on Zoids and Naruto anime series), and are responsible for the distribution of some Hasbro products in Japan, such as Play-Doh, Jenga and Monopoly. The company was formerly responsible for distribution of the My Little Pony products in Japan before Bushiroad acquired the distribution rights to them starting with the franchise's Friendship Is Magic line (though the animated television series was owned by Hasbro). Later in 2015, after Bushiroad disowned the distribution rights, Sega Toys reacquired the rights to all generations of the franchise. In the 1960s, Tomy was a sponsor and toy maker for the television show Giant Robo (tokusatsu). They merged with Takara shortly before the bankruptcy of the mentioned company.

A list of notable products include:

Armatron
Atollo - construction toy
Beyblade - metal top fighting game
Blip (game) - mechanical Pong-type handheld game
Blythe
Boggle Flash
Choro-Q - micro toy cars
Chuggington
Compass
Crossbows and Catapults
Duel Masters Trading Card Game
Flip Flap - solar-powered plant
Furby
Gashapon - vending machines
Guitar Rockstar
i-SOBOT
Jenga
Jenny
Katekyo Hitman Reborn! Flame Rumble - a series of fighting games based on the manga/anime for the Nintendo DS
Kingdom Hearts Trading Card Game
Lamaze
Licca
Metal Fight Beyblade - fighting game
Metal Fight Beyblade Zero-G - fighting game
Omnibot - line of toy robots
Plarail - plastic electric train set system (called "Tomica World" outside Japan)
Pop-up Pirate
Pretty Rhythm
PriPara - the successor to the Pretty Rhythm series
Q-steer - micro radio-controlled cars based on Choro-Q
Rummikub
Screwball Scramble
Starriors
Switch 16
Thomas and Friends - Plarail, Capsule Plarail, Tomica, and Tomix themes, and preschool products
Thunderbirds
Tomica - die-cast toy
Tomix - the model railway brand of Tomytec, a subsidiary of Takara Tomy
Tomy Tutor - home computer
Tomytronic - 3D handheld game series
Tron - action figures and vehicles based on the Disney film
Z-Knights - line of constructible models of humanoid robots styled after knights that ran from 1991 to 1993.
Zoids
Zootopia
Water Games