Tamiya Corporation - Entrance of Plastic Models

Entrance of Plastic Models

The company was founded in 1946 as Tamiya Shoji & Co. (Tamiya Company) by Yoshio Tamiya (15 May 1905 - 2 November 1988) in Oshika, Shizuoka City. It was a sawmill and lumber supply company. With the high availability of wood, the Mokuzaigyou Company's wood products division (founded in 1947) was also producing wooden models of ships and airplanes, which later became company's foundation. In 1953, they decided to stop the sale of architectural lumber and focused solely on model making.

In the mid 1950s, foreign made plastic models were beginning to be imported and wooden model sales were decreasing, so in 1959 they decided to manufacture plastic models. Their first model was the Yamato. However, Tamiya's predecessors had sold Yamato models at 350 yen. By competing, Tamiya was at risk to get into the red by setting their price the same. However, they could not recover the cost of producing metal molds, so once again, they changed their products to wooden models, but at that time the model trade's tide was turning toward plastic models.

Using metal molds no longer needed for plastic toys, they released a racecar mini-kit, which was to finance the production of their next plastic model. To their good fortune, it became a hit. They decided that the second plastic model was to be the Panther tank, which had a linear form which would make the molds simple to produce. They commissioned Shigeru Komatsuzaki to do the box art. The Panther was motorized, moved well, and had a clear instruction manual which made it easy to assemble. Because of this, it gained a good reputation. It was made in a 1/35 scale because it was decided that it would use a single TYPE 2 battery but would hold 2 of them.