Unofficial TAKARA TOMY Database - Alpha
Not affiliated with anyone, not used with permission, no guarantees, totally rouge, unauthorized and in good faith. Use at your own risk/peril.

The Unofficial TAKARA TOMY Database is an attempt to catalogue Takara Tomy rail products into a single, easily searchable repository. This includes Tomy, Plarail, Tomica, HyperCity and other various brand names Tomy trains and rail toys have been released under.

The aim is to be a visual as well as textual record of items. The hope is the database can become a valuable resource for collectors and fans of Tomy toys. This database is not monetised and is puely run by enthusiast volunteers who make no profit from this site. It actually costs money to pay for the hosting.

Today the database is certainly not complete and continues to be a work in progress. The alpha status is because of the ongoing work to the back end database and front end user interface. Things will change as we continue to fix bugs, improve usability and introduce new features. Once the app is feature complete we will enter beta status which means it's just the database content that will continue to expand.

You may wonder why? There are a lot of sources of information on the internet already that describe Tomy and Plarail products. I have also personally used these resources a lot but this is what I found and why I think this database can still find a place as a valuable (and different) tool.

There are many sites in Japanese. Not as many focusing on English.
There are several blogs and review sites but these aren't as easily searched for product information.
There are a few attempts at comprehensive catalogues but seem to be either abandoned or only cover a particular era or range.
There doesn't seem to be anything with the power of a relational database to search and filter on product data such as name, year, type etc.

With many features still planned to come the database will continue to evolve. But today it can still be useful and this will increase over time as content and features are added. Some of the current working features include:

Click the name or primary image of an entry on the main index page to be taken to a detailed entry page for that item.
Use the Quick Searches on the left hand sidebar of the main index page to quickly find some common search results.
Searches have persistent URL's so you can peform an interesting search and share the results URL with someone.
Item entry pages also have persistent URL's so you can share an item page with someone by copying the URL.
Filters will restrict the items listed on the index page by brand or type or both.
Search by name or part number (eg. J-20) by changing the dropdown. Where identical part numbers are used all matches will be returned.
Change the main index page to display retail packaged items or pictures of the items unboxed.
Limit search results displayed per page for comfortable browsing through items.

There is still a lot to do, both functionally and content wise. At present the focus has been on building the database and front end application as well as populating some base entries. In regards to the database entries priority has been given to getting an item entered with at least one retail and one unboxed image. At this stage the quality of entries may not be 100% complete. This is intentional in order to spend more time on entering new items than thouroughly researching the information on an individual entry. Improving the quality of the entries will be an ongoing activity.

If you would like to help please contact Finno at Blue Plastic Tracks. We always need people to supply high quality images and accurate information for database items.

Total entries in the database: 213

Total Plarail entries: 151

Total Tomica Hypercity entries: 19

Total Tomica World entries: 16

Total Tomy Train entries: 25


Back