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Plaroad (2004) Vehicles

First written May 2024
Expanded September 2024, February 2025, September 2026
Reformatted September 2026

In the mid 1990s Tomy developed the B/O Tomica system of battery-powered die-cast avehicles that ran on a plastic road system. In the later 90s the series was renamed Motor Tomica and after the Plarail range was refreshed in the early 2000s the Motor Tomica range was also reformatted in 2004 as Plaroad. Tomy had previously used the Plaroad name for their later 1980s Plarail-companion road system. Instead of being die-cast most vehicles were plastic and ran on a single AAA battery instead of the older N battery powered vehicles. Plaroad was phased out around 2008.

C-01 Tobu Bus (Plaroad) (2004)

One of the initial 2004 vehicles in the renamed Plaroad range, a white bus representing a Tobu bus sold as C-01 モータートミカ東武バス (C-01 Motor Tomica Tobu Bus). It is made of all plastic, and there are no nice translucent windows like the Motor Tomica busses...

These newer vehicles use more common AAA batteries instead of N size batteries like the older B/O and Motor Tomica vehicles, which is a nice change. This is a fairly early production example dating to June 2004 when Plaroad was still pretty new.

In 2004 the Thomas-series Bertie and Lorry as well as the updated Green Bulgy were all rereleased in Thomas-series Plaroad packaging as TC-01 Bertie, TC-02 Lorry, and TC-03 Bulgy. In March 2005 an individual release of Elizabeth, previously sold in the Thomas and Elizabeth Railroad Crossing Station Set, was released as TC-04.