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Friday, March 29, 2024

Tamiya: A company borne out of passion

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When Yoshio Tamiya, an owner of a sawmill and lumber business based in Shizuoka City in Japan decided to use his surplus wood and carve out model ships, nobody predicted that it would someday evolve into a globally recognized brand. Every bloke from my generation would know what the blue and red twin stars of Tamiya stands for, which for me represented my youth and that burning passion for cars.

One can just imagine my surprise when Justin Uy, one of the biggest Tamiya sub-dealers in the country, invited this writer for a media tour of their facility in Cebu City. To our amazement, Tamiya has been operating a manufacturing facility in the Queen City of the South for the past 24 years. According to Shakespeare Chan, owner of Li’l’s Hobby Shop and the acknowledged “Ground Zero” of plastic kit enthusiasts, the Tamiya factory in Lapu-Lapu, Cebu is the second and only biggest facility outside of Japan. “This Cebu plant currently produces 90 percent of Tamiya’s model line by volume, ten percent of which is produced from Japan,” he explains. 

Rare Tamiya RC kits on display at the lobby of the factory

Together with another Tamiya sub-dealer Robertson Sy Tan and Albert Go of Blade Autocenter, the 30-man strong Manila contingent composed of motoring media and hobbyists lost their composure upon seeing the Tamiya display of assembled kits at the lobby entrance. Like kids in a toy store, everybody jostled for position for that perfect camera shot, as we all gasped in awe at the sight of beautifully crafted and rare model kits. From cars, planes, ships and tanks, every desirable plastic kit was there encased in a glass cabinet. I was perspiring from sheer excitement as the adrenaline kicked in. The funny thing was, we were yet to start the tour and all of us were literally shaking in our boots already. 

The tour begins

Go Tsuboi, SVP for Tamiya Ph reveals that from conceptualization, production to packaging, everything is done in-house. “This would enable us to maintain the product quality, accuracy and detailing of our product line. We have a team of designers that go through countless photographs and we also travel all over the World to see the project vehicle up close. If the need arises, the company buys the actual vehicle to be replicated in scale for better accuracy and detail,” he says. Tamiya has been making their own molds since the sixties, enabling them to reproduce detailed scale models, from the engine, under chassis and interiors of the cars, planes and tanks. All model and RC kits have the seal of approval of car, ships and plane manufacturers. 

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The Tamiyas being sold globally are proudly Philippine made.

After going through the first floor which was casting and mold making, we were ushered into the “Master Works” department, where a room was filled to the rafters with model kits for display purposes inside artistically finished packaging. Here, Filipino artisans work and comprehensively test finished RC model kits prior to packaging. The room also has the scaled down version of the Honda RA272 Formula One Car, which according to Tsuboi, was the plastic kit which put Tamiya on the World map of scale modeling. This specific kit was hand crafted by Cebuano artisans. 

Once they are sealed and packaged in Tamiya’s signature boxes, they are shipped to Japan and Europe for distribution. We all felt proud that Filipino hands are contributory to the success of this Japanese icon. 

This year marks Tamiya’s 50th anniversary of continuous participation in the Nuremberg Toy Fair. Judging from the jaw dropping expressions of my 40-year old colleagues, the excitement, joy and passion of seeing how a Tamiya model is made is more than enough to keep the fires of Tamiya burning for future generations. Given the enthusiasm of its dealers like Uy of Hobbes and Landes and Tan of Blade which has 30 outlets nationwide, they will continue to inspire the next batch of enthusiasts in the same manner Li’l’s Hobby Shop was to my generation.

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