A manufacturer of electronic and mechanical toys, established in Japan in
1924. Responsible for a huge variety of ultra-cool products in the 1980s, including
Screwball Scramble,
Aargh,
Popup Pirate, mechanised
Pachinko-style pocket games,
Zoids, and of course the
Tomy robots. These ranged from wind-up keychain-sized things to hulking motorised
R2D2-alikes, replete with
remote controls, sensors,
tape decks,
articulated limbs and voice control. Against the all-conquering onslaught of videogames and the dwindling of interest in
robotics, Tomy have focussed instead on toys for younger children. Their range now includes deplorable rip-offs of
Buckaroo and
Operation! It is tempting to think that if they had continued to focus on robots, they would almost certainly have managed to construct a complete, sentient android indistinguishable from a human by now. Their japanese site has a museum section describing all of their products since the 1950s: www.tomy.com