Takara Tomy - History and Corporate Name

History and Corporate Name

The decision to use the Tomy name in English, yet the Takara-Tomy name in Japanese, was made for pragmatic reasons. Tomy has 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.

Editorial policies of many Western (English language) business publications is to ignore "merger" declarations and declare one company to be bought by another, often by splitting hairs over the number of board members, etc. Therefore, in much of the English media, the Takara-Tomy merger was characterized as a "take-over" of Takara by Tomy. This assumption was made easier by the adoption of only the Tomy name in English. It is true that several years of losses had put Takara in a financially weakened state at the time of the merger. On the other hand, Takara did in fact have significantly higher sales than Tomy for three years preceding the merger. Yet it is common knowledge that, over the years, the management of Takara and Tomy, which were located less than a kilometer apart in Tokyo and had respectfully competed with each other as they grew side-by-side into world-class toy companies, had discussed merging several times, including times when Takara appeared stronger. Thus, ultimately, philosophically, culturally and legally under Japanese corporate law, the companies agreed to merge on an equal basis.

There has been much post-merger speculation on the control of brands such as Transformers now being with Tomy vs. Takara. Much of this arises due to the new use of the English "TOMY" copyright on all packaging, including former Takara brands shipped by Hasbro. This is simply the natural result of the practical decision to use only the Tomy name in English. In fact, internally, where 99% of the employees are Japanese and speak mainly Japanese, there is only one company, known in Japanese as "Takara-Tomy," and almost all internal departments have a healthy mix of management from both former companies. The fact that the English name is "Tomy" bears little relevance for most employees.

In Japan, Takara-Tomy continues to use the former Tomy and Takara names as distinct brand names on toy lines which originated in each company, but most new toy lines or stand-alone products carry the new Takara-Tomy brand. Staple toy lines from each company are continuing, in many cases gaining synergy from the co-marketing of each other's properties. This merger gave the combined company near parity in domestic (Japan) toy market share to domestic rival Bandai.

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. In 2006, Tomy UK launched a website where consumers can buy directly from Tomy's catalogue online.

In early 2011, Takara Tomy acquired RC2 and its sub-brand, Learning Curve, which included The First Years, Lamaze, and Compass.