fall inside a hole

Tomy Amusement Park series (1968)

First written April 4, 2024

In 1968 Tomy released a series of amusement park type rides and trains as ゆうえんちシリーズ (Yuuenchi or Amusement Park Series). These were seemingly not sold as part of the main Plarail range even though they used the same rails, the products appeared on Plarail boxes of the time, and the Amusement Park series boxes used the same carnival tent logo mark as Plarail at the time. This series was produced in collaboration with Child Guidance Toys, an American toy company that had been producing their own spin-off of the 1950s Tot Railroad in the United States and exported it into Great Britain. Tomy manufactured the trains, train cars, figures, amusement park accessories, and stop rails for both the Japanese domestic releases and the Child Guidance releases, with Child Guidance handling production of the rest of their track.

In addition to the obvious difference in rails, there are some differences in the Japanese train locomotives and the passenger figures. Locomotives for the domestic market are shorter and squatter, with the driver sticker taking up more of the cab area and a less thick red running board and stubbier funnel. Japanese passenger dolls are also shorter. This may be to keep the train within the Plarail loading gauge, which the Child Guidance one is too tall for. I do not currently own any Japanese-issue Amusement Park trains, with the ones shown further down the page coming from export Child Guidance sets. Some nice photos of the Amusement Park No. 1 Set can be found in this BluePlasticTracks thread (archived). Interestingly, the front of the box for the sets seems to show the taller export version of the locomotive. The larger No. 2 set included a second car in blue and the Ferris wheel ride. Both sets can be seen in the BigLobe Plarail Museum.

Tomy also manufactured the export version of the locomotive and dolls seen here. This train was sold in a few Child Guidance sets as well as individually as the Joy Ride train. The version of the train sold in Japan does not seem to have the face sticker on the front of the boiler, perhaps because its shorter form did not have room. The export version with face does appear on some Japanese boxes, as can be seen here (direct archived).

In Japan the individual release included the locomotive and two cars with passengers as ゆうえんちセット Amusement Park Set, seemingly most commonly yellow cars with red riders. These yellow cars have blue wheels, which is pretty uncommon on Plarail vehicles. There was actually a second longer locomotive of a similar style which included a small air pump run by the motor which blows a whistle inside the cab. This locomotive with a well wagon and log car with wooden logs reminiscent of early Plastic Trains was released as ゆうえんちセット ピッポートレーン or Amusement Park Series Pippo Train. A similar whistle was built into the Child Guidance Shuttle Train. Boxed versions of both of these trains can be seen in the Plarail Museum.

The trains seem somewhat fragile (particularly the red plastic the chassis is made from) and most examples of the export version I have seen needed some kind of repair. Some information about how to repair these trains can be found here, although I do not have accurate information for the Japanese domestic version of the gearbox.

The cars have a coupling system somewhat similar to Plarail of the time. It has a wide range of motion and resembles the Child Guidance Shuttle Train coupling system. As far as I can tell, there is no difference between Japanese and export cars.

The box for the Joy Ride train and Kiddie Land show an earlier version of the coupling system that resembles the straight-through plastic couplings used on later Plastic Rail push trains.

The small dolls shown here are the taller export versions. Other than the height differences, the design of the figures and their faces is unchanged. The dolls can sit in the train cars or on the different rides. All of the dolls shown on this page are the taller export versions.

The main Amusement Park series rides are a Ferris wheel, a carousel, and a spinning teacups ride as used in Child Guidance Kiddie Land. These accessories are seemingly unchanged between their different releases.

All of the accessories are marked as made in Japan on the bottom, being produced by Tomy, with the tops of the bases saying A Child Guidance Toy and Pat. Pend. It seems that Child Guidance came up with the design for the amusement park rides and seemingly as part of a deal between Child Guidance and Tomy Tomy would produce the trains and accessories for multiple sales regions, handling the packaging and distribution and modification to fit their existing standard in Japan. It seems that this range did not sell well and was expensive to produce, although the Child Guidance Kiddie Land set is relatively easy to find in America and the U.K. The merry go round and spinning teacups shown here are from a Kiddie Land set but I do have a Japanese-issue Ferris wheel shown here which confirmed to me that domestic Japanese market accessories still said Child Guidance on them.

In addition to coming in the two sets, accessories were sold individually in boxes with a stop track and a few of the doll figures. It does not appear that these individual releases came with any cars, meaning unless you bought one of the sets or individual trains you would not have any little car carriages for the dolls to ride in, even pulled by some other regular Plarail (or even the whistling locomotive in the Amusement Park range).

The carousel features three horses that bob up and down while the carousel goes around.

The Ferris wheel has three free-spinning buckets that can seat the passenger figures.

These accessories have gears or other geared features lined up with the track connector to accommodate the gear on the end of the stop rail. Locating the accessory onto the two locating pegs lines up the gears and will let the train's tires run the accessory around when stopped.

The spinning teacups ride has a central planetary gearing system to make the teacups spin when the round base is driven around by the train.

Interestingly, one photograph (archived) I have seen shows an airplane-type ride in a No.1 style set as well as apparently a set with the whistling version of the locomotive. I am not entirely convinced that either of these came out.

Tomy produced the stop rails for both the Plarail and Child Guidance versions of the amusement park in Japan. The stop tracks have a bent piece of metal acting as the spring under the release switch. The gears on these pieces are splitting with age. Some notes on repairing these tracks is available here.

The amusement park sets were all basic oval sets and thus I can show what they would look like fairly easily, with the caveat that, like elsewhere on the page, the pictured locomotive and dolls are the taller export versions, not the shorter Japanese ones. I found and purchased two of the Plarail style stop track, one missing the gear and the other missing all of the "internals" as well as a damaged Plarail Ferris wheel in later 2023. After comparing the Ferris wheel to a Child Guidance example, I did not find any difference in the tooling or, seemingly, production. The rails pictured are all period rails which are completely smooth.

The Amusement Park Series is an interesting collaboration between Tomy and Child Guidance and an early example of Tomy exporting Plarail outside of Japan. Sales of the Amusement Park range began and ended in 1968, although it seems that the Child Guidance version may have stayed in production longer. In 1973 the export locomotive tooling was used in the Plarail ディズニーデラックスセット Disney Deluxe Set which included a playmat, stickers, a papercraft castle tunnel, yellow and exclusive pink cars, Disney locomotive with blue face sticker, and recolored and redecorated Ferris wheel and merry-go-round with a variety of Disney finger puppet dolls to play with on the set. An unused example of this set can be seen in the Plarail Museum, with the BigLobe Plarail Museum showing the set out of its packaging. One Geyper Play-Rail set included a version of the merry-go-round rebuilt to use Family Dolls. The Amusement Park series was adapted by Payva as Tren Verbena and Trenet in Spain with Plarail-style rails and many parts in alternate colors.

It seems that in the mid 1970s the concept of this train set (really, the Child Guidance Kiddie Land version) was borrowed for the Walt Disney Character Play World, which featured a very similar locomotive carrying Disney characters in three cars around a Disney World playboard with similar attractions and mechanisms.