Tomica Hypercity (UK) Product Launch

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Me again Big Grin

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 modelsĀ  Dodgy ], 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 stockĀ  Big Grin

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 stationĀ  Angel

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 lolĀ  Big Grin Ā 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 edgesĀ  Cool ]
Been building Plarail worlds since 2001; Building when I can in 2023 Cool
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Tomica Hypercity (UK) Product Launch - by chrisjo - 12-24-2021, 05:01 PM
RE: Tomica Hypercity (UK) Product Launch - by Plarail Man UK - 12-24-2021, 09:19 PM



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