Tomy began producing many windups toys in the 1970s, both small vehicles and animal style moving windup toys and a long series of pocket games and other games that incorporate windup mechanisms.
Different series of related wind-up toys like the Tomy Comics, Rascal Robots, Pocket Pets, and Flip Floppers were released. Even if you don't know it was originally made by Tomy, many common and copied spinning and walking mechanisms were developed for these toys.
Some of the smaller Tomy wind-up toys in my collection include...
Year | Name | Description | Photo |
---|---|---|---|
1981 | Double Decker Bus | Uptown-Downtown bus that spins around with its upper level raising and lowering |
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1997 | Little Percy | Windup Percy from Thomas the Tank Engine with periodic spinning action |
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In 1975 Tomy began producing a series of wind-up and/or spring-loaded "pocket games" which were mechanical games that could fit in a pocket. These were fairly successful in the era before the Game Boy and other portable electronic devices and games. In Japan these were sold as Tomy Pocketmates, in the U.K. they were known as Pocketeers, and in the U.S. they were called simply Pocket Games. Some games were also sold by Milton Bradley. A website showing many variations of pretty much all of these games can be seen here.
Some of the Tomy wind-up pocket games in my collection include...
Year | Name | Description | Photo |
---|---|---|---|
1980 | Motocross | Landscape motorcycle-themed American release of the Japanese F1 Racing and U.K. Pileup game |
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Tomy also produced a few alliterative wind-up portable playsets with carrying case playing surfaces.
Year | Name | Description | Photo |
---|---|---|---|
1982 |
Tote-Along-Train Bring-Along-A-Train |
Windup train toy that travels around a figure eight |
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1997 |
Thomas
Tote-Along-Train Thomas Bring-Along-A-Train |
Thomas the Tank Engine-themed version of the previous Tomy Tote-Along/Bring-Along-A-Train toy |
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Mechanical geniuses that they were, Tomy produced other larger toys that used wind-up mechanisms for timers, music boxes, and other moving features
Year | Name | Description | Photo |
---|---|---|---|
1980s-2000s | Bring-Along-A-Song | Series of portable wind-up music boxes shaped like traditional audio equipment |
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Appearing around 2000, Tomy began selling a series of gachapon toys based on Plarail with windup trains that could pull cars around small tracks. Eventually, I will cover some of my Capsule Plarail collection on its own page(s).