Whats difference tomy/takara/plairail

Hello,

I have tonnes of Tomy stuff, but I do not know what the differences are in Takara Tomy then there is Plairail, and Trackmaster.

Trackmaster I have some of, really do not like the trackmaster trains or much of their sets.

I want to expand my Tomy sets, so should I be looking at takara spelling might be wrong, and or plairail ?

And where does one buy plairail items ? Looking at staying with thomas range at this stage. And for collecting.

takara and plarail are one and the same.
takara tomy is the manufacturer and plarail [kind of like fisher-price and trackmaster] and is the name given to the range. their "family tree" is quite tangled with a number of ranges

plarail sells thomas in japan, along with chuggington, disney and soon to come snoopy trains. they also sell engines and other rolling stock based on actual japanese trains.
they also have plarail advance, which is basically half the size of your usual engines. so, a single track usually runs one train. with advance, you can fit two on the same track.
their quality is very high and even abused and broken engines can usually be repaired and given another life.
there are fears that takara tomy is going to stop producing thomas and friends, though theres been no official announcement yet.

trackmaster is sold in the west and they only sell thomas. with the new design, quality has slipped and it doesnt have the following of the old blue track.

Hi,

Wow Nice post thanks for that, I appreciate it.
Where does one buy them though ? Only in Japan and or ebay ?

plarail can be found on ebay, but the variety isnt as big and prices are often higher.

japan doesnt have ebay anymore, and their version cannot be used by "outsiders". there are at least two "middleman" sites which westerners can use to bid and buy. i personally use jauce, as do several other members. the other is japamart. with jauce, you deposit money first via paypal and then use the balance to pay for the item, post and fees. items are sent from the seller to a warehouse. they are held for up to 65 days, during which time you can build up your buys.
then you can get the items sent, which again you use your balance to pay for. they can repack into a single box, which jauce does extremely well. all in all, it can be expensive, but worth it for those hard to find items.

geri, super and likely a few others will have more advice for you.

[Super]

Your searches should also include the words Tomica and/or Tomica World for another division of the Tomy/Plarail/Takara line.

[Ucwepn]

It should also be mentioned that before trackmaster was sold in the west the tomy versions were sold here until around 2006 or so, if you happen to have some TOMY trains already then that's where they came from, as super mentioned Tomica and Tomica world were names it was sold under.

plarail can be found on ebay, but the variety isnt as big and prices are often higher.

japan doesnt have ebay anymore, and their version cannot be used by "outsiders". there are at least two "middleman" sites which westerners can use to bid and buy. i personally use jauce, as do several other members. the other is japamart. with jauce, you deposit money first via paypal and then use the balance to pay for the item, post and fees. items are sent from the seller to a warehouse. they are held for up to 65 days, during which time you can build up your buys.
then you can get the items sent, which again you use your balance to pay for. they can repack into a single box, which jauce does extremely well. all in all, it can be expensive, but worth it for those hard to find items.

geri, super and likely a few others will have more advice for you.

Why not try amazon, plarail thomas' go for 19-20 free shipping