Merger
Takara and Tomy announced their merger on May 13, 2005, to become effective March 1, 2006. In English, the legal name of the merged company is "TOMY Co. Ltd." while in Japanese the legal company name is the combined name, K.K. Takara-Tomy (株式会社タカラトミー ).TYO: 7867. The decision to use the "Tomy" name in English, while the Takara-Tomy name in Japanese, was made for pragmatic reasons. Tomy had built considerable brand recognition internationally, particularly in the area of infant and preschool products, where brand trust is very important. On the other hand, most of Takara's international hit products (Microman, Transformers, Battle Beasts, Beyblade, B-Daman, et al.) have been sold and branded by other companies, most notably Hasbro. Therefore, going through the costly process of registering and/or changing the company name in all the countries where Tomy does business would have been expensive and unproductive. Thus, with the merged company's international subsidiaries continuing to use the Tomy name, it seemed appropriate to keep a domestic English name which matched that of the international subsidiaries.
While Japanese commercial law allows wide latitude in translating Japanese corporate names into official English names, the merged company took the unusual step of adopting the one-sided "TOMY Company, Ltd." name in official English, while taking the combined name K.K. Takara-Tomy (株式会社タカラトミー)TYO: 7867 in official Japanese. Additionally, international subsidiaries of Takara were merged into those of TOMY. Therefore, while the "Takara" brand is still in use for some products, officially, in English, Takara as a corporate entity no longer exists. Confusingly, the Japanese company's corporate logo is a simple amalgamation of the former Takara and Tomy English logos. The logo, along with the tendency for direct translations of Japanese information into English and an ardent international fan base for some famous toys originating at Takara, have caused much of the press and the general English-speaking public to call the merged company "Takara-Tomy", even in English.
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