Tomy Company, Ltd. (株式会社タカラトミー, Kabushikigaisha Takara Tomī) (trading as Takara Tomy in Asia and Tomy elsewhere) is a Japanese toy company. It was established in 1924 by Eiichirō Tomiyama as Tomiyama Toy Manufacturing Company The company decided to use the name “Tomy” in international subsidiaries, and “Takara Tomy” in Japan, because Tomy had built considerable international brand recognition while Takara’s products In Western media, the Takara Tomy merger was typically characterised as a ‘takeover’ of Takara by Tomy (likely because several years of losses had put Takara in a financially weakened state at the time of the merger (although Takara did have significantly higher sales than Tomy)). However, the companies’ management teams had previously discussed merging (including at times when Takara appeared stronger). Under Japanese corporate law, the move was a merger of both companies on an equal basis.
