Along Came Tomy

I was in the middle of writing about my new-found hobby earlier last week when somebody interrupted my flow of thought. Oh, well.

So what’s new? Well, I am now into collecting toy trucks. Whoa. (grin) But yes, aside from my other collections, namely: journals, notebooks, pens, elephant figurines, soda cans, shot glasses, and fast food toys, I am now into toy trucks. It all started when one of my officemates came to work one morning and brought along his remote/radio-controlled toy car. Shucks. I knew I wanted one too, but the idea of a big RC toy car wasn’t very interesting to me. Toy cars aren’t my thing. What I want is a toy fire truck like this, complete with water spout, sirens, lights, ladders, and all the stuff that go with a real fire truck. But I don’t have the heart to shell out that much amount of money over a toy. At least not yet.

But one afternoon, while I was heartbroken over losing a James Patterson book to someone else at my favorite second-hand bookstore, I cheered myself up by going through Robinson's toy section. Hmmm… Among the limited toy selection I was looking at, the small cabinet of TOMY scale models caught my attention. And… surprise! Right in front of me are three TOMY firetrucks! At that time, I didn’t have any second thoughts of buying the toys. I bought the following TOMYs:

• #13, scaled at 1/159, it’s a Morita airport crash tender;
• #22, scaled at 1/120, it’s a Nissan diesel aerial ladder fire truck; and
• #108, which is a Hino aerial ladder fire truck, it is scaled at 1/139.

After my purchase, I realized the value (or importance) of TOMY or Tomica items in the toy industry. I was surprised to learn that TOMY has its own following, comparable to Matchbox, Hot Wheels, or Maisto. And so, me being me, I wasn’t content with the fire trucks yet. I got to have the other trucks (did I say I’m not into cars?)! Here, I got myself two new TOMY toys:

• #71, scaled at 1/110, it’s a wheel loader from the lot of several Hitachi construction machines; and
• #120, the last in the TOMY set, it’s a Komatsu articulated dump truck scaled at 1/144.

Next time I’ll get the Komatsu Motor Grader (#24) and the Off-Road Dump (#102). Or I can also get the Coca-Cola trucks (#s 35 and 105). That is, if I don't get to find the other TOMY fire trucks yet (#s 41, 68, 74, and 119).