Tomica Hypercity (UK) Product Launch

I've been doing a bit of digging around into the history of the Tomica Hypercity product line in the UK, and now have a (very nearly) definitive list of every item in the range, along with Tomy's description of it. This has been made needlessly difficult by the fact that there is no trace of the actual name of any item on its box or on its instruction sheet, just their part numbers. I've been able to use archive.org (the 'Wayback Machine') to analyze the now defunct Tomy.co.uk website, as well as its French and German equivalents, which has given me the names of all but six products, and other research has given me the names of all but one of them.

During the course of this exploration I found that the official launch of Tomica Hypercity in the UK took place on 21st July 2010. This is the Press Release issued two days earlier, on the 19th:

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Tomica, Japan’s top selling toy road and rail network, is set to smash the World Record for the tallest toy railway network ever on its maiden voyage at Europe’s number one destination station, St Pancras International on Wednesday 21st July 2010.

Celebrating its 40th anniversary, Tomica from Tomy, is about to take the UK by storm. Beneath the iconic Meeting Point statue, the biggest Tomica world ever seen outside of Japan will be assembled, featuring a 10-foot tall railway network, which will tower above those in attendance and break the World Record.

Tomica combines road and rail play to create an amazing expandable world of imagination, as hi-tech trains rush round the track and cars cruise round the city streets, you will be truly amazed!

Ex-servicemen from Royal British Legion Industries will be working through the night, piecing together the road and rail network in readiness for the Gadget Show’s Jason Bradbury to fit the final piece of track into place.

Come and witness an amazing mini-metropolis made up of over 4,500 individual parts come to life.

This really is a launch not to be missed and a chance to see the awesome world of Tomica for the first time.

We hope you can join us!

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There are some photographs of the construction, taken by Press Association photographer Carl Court. Big versions of these are available from Alamy of you want to pay for them.
 

A report in the Daily Telegraph newspaper on the 23rd stated that:

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At 10ft tall the train track is already attracting much interest from passengers since it was unveiled on Wednesday. The project was sponsored by Royal British Legion Industries, a charity that helps put ex-servicemen back in work, after they were approached by toy manufacturers Tomica.

The Japanese company is currently celebrating its 40th anniversary and it is now looking to break the UK market. The model railway will be exhibited at St Pancras until 7pm tonight. The display follows in a long tradition of record breaking at the station.

Ben Ruse, a spokesman for St Pancras Station, said: "St Pancras is a unique station and we try to do things that have never been done before. "We have the longest champagne bar in Europe, we have the record for the most people standing in their underpants and now we have the tallest toy train track. "We break records for fun."

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All the items in the range when it was launched are shown in the leaflet that you can download here. Others came along later in 2010 and 2011.

Unfortunately for us, it appears that the UK market remained largely unbroken. The Tomica product line was dropped from the Tomy UK website on the 1st August 2013, just three years after its launch. Remaindered stocks of some accessory items are still available in bulk nine years later, I know one eBuy seller who was recently offered a whole container load of Clear Domed Tunnels.



The Hypercity product line in the USA was different, though there was some overlap - I'll speak about that in another post sometime maybe.

The one item that I still need help with is 85108 (reboxed Plarail S-15 259 srs Narita Airport Express). There is no trace of this item on Tomy.co.uk, I need definitive evidence of what Tomy called it?



I believe that some time in the past I've seen it referred to as the "City Express", though I can't find any reference to that name now. On the other hand I have found one obscure reference to it on a Polish website as "Metro Train MT 1100", which sort of fits with the names given to the other four re-boxed Plarail 3-car trains, for example 85109 (E4 Max) is "City Train CT2100". Can anyone throw any light on this?

EDIT 27-Dec-21: The name of 85108 is confirmed as Metro Train MT1100, I found it on the archive of toysrus.co.uk for 25-Dec-2011.

[Super]

Fantastic research article Dr Chris, must have taken a long time to did for all that information. I have only a vague memory of ever seeing that Narita Express in a Tomica box like that before. Wonder if it was released at the very end of the Hyper City series and therefore had a limited run?

I got a huge chuckle after reading this "we have the record for the most people standing in their underpants"

Me again

I was 11 [or thereabouts] when Hypercity dropped, and I remember how excited I was that the 'proper' Japanese Tomica trains were finally coming to the UK [blissfully unaware at the time that the entire Tomica World line outside it's Thomas-isms was all Japanese models  ], and I remember going to Argos in Chelmsford [my local town, Argos is a catalogue based department store] with some money I had saved up to buy the 'Auto Station' set when it was all-new; This came with the E3 Series Shinkansen 'Dr.Yellow' inspection train, the East-i.

All I seem to recall on the box, if there was any blurb [I believe there was], it implied the East i was some kind of passenger train; We can assume that Tomy was banking on the fact that nobody in the UK would bother to research the origins of the train and find out that it was departmental stock 

That said, unlike the other Dr.Yellows [which this is qualified as, being an inspection unit], it carries a livery that looks like it should be on a passenger train, so take that for what it's worth I suppose; At the time, I had no idea lol xD

Indeed, another memory I had [so attached was I to the set], that I took it with me to my grandma's to play with at Christmas, and bought myself the standard E3 Series as a boxed model so I had 2 trains to run on the layout; I remember spending ages on the evenings running up to the 25th playing with the trains and the station 

Still got them all in the larger collection of course, although oddly the E3 Series I bought hasn't actually survived too well; It may have been in a bad batch of plastic, as it's yellowed really badly, almost like being in a room with a smoker [of which we have none in the family], so it's been replaced on mainline duty by an older Tomica World era E3 from my boxed Tomica World City Set, which is still pristine white [and doesn't appear to be yellowing, which is good - I haven't seen many yellowed E3's so maybe I just got a dodgy one, who knows?].

As for the Ebay new-old-stock, I can confirm it's still plentiful lmao - I recieved a lot of it last year from my mum who decided that maybe a christmas present to go with the train tracks snaking around the top of her stairs was a good idea lol   I got a number of clear tunnels, and around 10 packs of paving sections [which I really needed as I didn't have enough to cover all my road edges  ]

[Super]

@Chrisjo
Thats a pretty good price that seller is asking for those new clear tunnels and tracks.

@Plarail Man UK
The E3's are notorious for yellowing.

Playrail Man UK. That'll be the Mega Station set. I've got the instructions for that somewhere. I'll have to dig them out and see what they say. This is the back of the Hypercity East-i box...no blurb, same goes for its instructions.


In Hypercity-speak it's the "CT1100 City Train", and it would have cost you £9.99 RRP when it came out. By the end of 2012 it was selling for £5.99 in TKMaxx (I've got one BNIB with the receipt tucked into it).

"Come on board the City Train CT1100 and on a journey around the new Tomica World of Roads, Tracks, and destinations. Train includes engine which can be set to two speeds, and 3 carriages. Discover a place where road a rail connect together and watch as high tech trains speed around the track, or travel around the city by car visiting all that the town has to offer. Tomica brings together a network of trains and cars, and allow the freedom to build your own Tomica Town. The possibilities are endless."

In re-boxing it for us in the West, they saved money by leaving out the lighting that's in the Plarail version, although the clear plastic lens part is still in the nose because it's also the retaining lip for the body shell.

The train that came in the Tomica World City Set was the E3 Akita Komachi, the older version with yellow wheels. Nice one.

@Chrisjo
Thanks, I suspected that the clear-lensed lights were actually for a light-up function never provided in our version, but honestly i've often considered fitting an LED in place anyway, especially since the space and lens is there, and I think it would look brilliant personally, I love Plarail models with light up headlights, especially when running trains at night


@Super
Is that E3s in general, or newer ones only? I admit, when I say I haven't seen many yellowed ones, the ones that weren't yellowed always seemed to be the older Tomica World era type with the yellow wheels, whereas the yellowed ones always seemed to have grey wheels; Could just be me I suppose, I am but one collector of many lol

[Super]

I have had many E3 Komachis both the grey and yellow wheeled bought in large lots that were yellowed and in a strange way. Yellowing is not consistent as it could have yellowing on one side or a darker shade on different areas. The original JR Kyushu 885's has the same yellowing problem. We have had many discussion here about the causes of yellowing with no definitive answers from what I remember. So many different theories.

Referring back to the question posed at the end of the first post in this thread...

The name of 85108 is confirmed as Metro Train MT1100, I found it on the archive of toysrus.co.uk for 25-Dec-2011. At the same time I discovered that this and six other items were Toys-R-Us exclusives.

It's astonishing that this was only 10 years ago, and yet this information is almost lost, there is no fan-site, tumblr, wiki or any other such online resource. I suppose I'd better do something about that here.

Incidentally, the first available archived listing of the Tomica Hypercity range on Toys-R-Us UK is for 07-Jul-11, with 19 products. By 26-Jun-2012 they were down to four, all substantially discounted, and the last archived listing was 24-Jun-2013, with two at half price.

I also discovered that Toys-R-Us will be returning to the UK in 2022, having closed all their stores and their on-line operation in 2018.

[Super]

But will the re-opening of the Toys-R-Us in the UK be like it used to be or just in name only...thats the question?

It'll be interesting to see for sure, here in the UK since the departure of Toys R Us, an Irish company called Smyths has since arrived and gone from a few outlets here and there to more or less a national chain with branches in most major towns, including many places that formerly had a Toys R Us - Smyths's buisness model is effectively identical to Toys R Us, being a bulk-sale discount chain with huge stores and large amounts of stock, selling baby goods, toys and video games - They are, more or less, exactly what Toys R Us was, but with considerably more branches than Toys R Us ever had here as far as I can tell, many being in smaller or more out of the way places that never had a Toys R Us before.

Previously Toys R Us in the UK leaned towards fewer, but extra-large sized branches located in out-of-town retail parks [our name for strip-malls] in major centres, with only a few being located within town centres themselves - At their height, Toys R Us UK had 105 branches, and Smyths now have 90 branches, with plans for further expansion, which when you consider around 5 years ago, Smyths was still a relatively small player compared to the then-extant Toys R Us, is very impressive, as they basically filled the void that Toys R Us left, and have managed to successfully hold their own ever since.

Interestingly, they also own the former branch network of Toys R Us in at least Germany, Switzerland and Austria as far as I know, with Toys R Us branches being rebranded to Smyths, so that should give you an idea how Smyths has effectively become Europe's Toys R Us.

So, as I see it, it's very interesting that Toys R Us would actually try to consider re-entering the UK market, as while I'm all for it [nothing like a good large-scale toyshop after all], given that Smyths has established a significant foothold in their absence and has more or less come to dominate the market that they once occupied, it'll be curious to see what Toys R Us do to try and stand out, as I don't see their original model working here anymore given that Smyths has more or less adapted said model, and dominated it here, so Toys R Us are going to need some kind of new gimmick to stand out; That said, brand loyalty is a strong factor, and given that for many years Toys R Us was at the forefront of UK mass toy retailing and was the first ever 'toy superstore' to reach UK shores, it's a name that holds significant nostalgia for many, and that alone might give them a foothold. 

Personal opinion - Maybe Toys R Us should aim for a mix of larger superstores as they had previously, and centralised mall locations in town centres; In the UK presently, we have only one high-street/mall based toy chain, The Entertainer, who are great, but are literally the only chain-based competition for Smyths, who are almost solely out-of-town based - Beyond that, it's independent chains and Hamleys for toy specialists, plus general retailers with a toy selection for smaller selections. It might be an idea for Toys R Us to mix their outlets therefore, so they're not trying to go up against either chain directly, as I think somehow a blended chain that offers an alternative destination to both rival chains and their formats would be ideal.