Takara
 |
|
|
Native name
|
株式会社タカラ |
|---|---|
|
Romanized name
|
Takara Co., Ltd. |
| Fate | Merged to Tomy |
| Successor | Takara Tomy |
| Founded | 1955 |
| Defunct | 2006 |
| Headquarters | Japan |
| Products | BowLingual, Choro-Q, Microman, Transformers |
| Website | www |
Takara Co., Ltd. was a Japanese toy company founded in 1955. In March 2006, the company merged with another prominent Japanese toy company, Tomy Co., Ltd., to form Takara Tomy (also known in English as TOMY Company Ltd.) The company motto was 「遊びは文化」 (asobi wa bunka), which means "playing is culture."
Takara is perhaps best known for producing the transforming Diaclone and Microman's Micro Change toylines, known as "The First Transformers". These toy lines, created in 1975, were re-branded in 1984 as "Transformers" by Hasbro for the Western market. Takara originated the hit toylines Battle Beasts (BeastFormers in Japan), E-kara karaoke microphone, Battle B-Daman and Beyblade (toy), all of which were sold or distributed internationally by Hasbro. Takara continues to sell Microman – the basis for the popular toyline "Micronauts" – which was first sold internationally by the now-defunct Mego in the 1970s, and Choro-Q, a mini pullback car, the production of which has been running since 1978 and which has often been marketed in Western countries as Penny Racers.
Takara also developed and published video games. The company was well known during the early 1990s for publishing various Chibi Maruko-chan video games, and porting some of SNK's Neo-Geo-based arcade games – especially the Fatal Fury and Samurai Shodown series – to less powerful home consoles, such as the Sega Genesis, the SNES, the Game Boy, or the Nintendo Entertainment System and its Japanese counterpart, the Famicom. However, none of their games for the NES and the Famicom were published in the United States, and were only published in Japan and in Europe. Takara was also involved in the production of the game seek-and-destroy with play-it during 2003. It has even published its own 3D fighting game series, Battle Arena Toshinden, which was developed by Tamsoft. Takara also published many other Japan-only games based on semi-popular franchises in that country. The extent of Takara's actual involvement in videogame development is largely unknown, however, since many of the company's games were developed by smaller companies not credited on the packaging or title screen, such as Tamsoft, BHE, E-game and KID corp, they are therefore often mistakenly credited to Takara.
...
Wikipedia