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.