The story
Entrance of plastic models
The company was founded in 1946 as Tamiya Shoji & Co. (Tamiya Commerce Company in translation) by Yoshio Tamiya (ja) (15 May 1905 – 2 November 1988) in Oshika, Shizuoka City. Initially the company was a sawmill and lumber supply. With the high availability of wood, the timber company's wood products division (founded in 1947) also started to produce wooden models of ships and airplanes, which later became the company's main line of production. In 1953, the company stopped selling architectural lumber and focused solely on model making.
In the mid-1950s, wooden model sales were decreasing due to foreign-made plastic models starting to be imported. This led the company to also manufacture plastic models, starting in 1959. Their first model was the Japanese battleship Yamato. Tamiya's competitors already sold similar models for 350 yen, forcing the company to match the price. However, at this cheap price, Tamiya was unable to recover the cost of producing metal molds, so once again, they refocused on wooden models.
In the 1960s, advance in technology made the use of metal molds no longer necessary to produce plastic toys, so Tamiya was able to release a racecar mini-kit, which financed the production of their next plastic model. To their good fortune, it became a hit. They decided that their second plastic model would be the Panther tank—it had a linear form, which would make the molds simple to produce. They commissioned illustrator Shigeru Komatsuzaki (ja) to create the box art. The Panther gained a good reputation for several of its features: it was motorized, had a good moving performance and was accompanied with a clear instruction manual, which made it easy to assemble. The model was made in a 1:35 scale— which later became the standard scale for military modelling. This particular scale was chosen because it was decided that the tank would hold two Type 2 batteries, despite using just one of them for its function.
Metal molds
Initially, Tamiya ordered metal molds from outside contractors, but often had delays and unclear pricing, which led to business problems. They decided then to scout metal-mold craftsmen to hire and created their own Metal Molds division in 1964. Starting in 1966, they transferred a number of craftsmen to the Mold Manufacturing Factory. These craftsmen slowly gained the know-how and came to make molds for Tamiya. Today, computer-aided design (CAD) is also used in the development process.
Tamiya's models became renowned for the extremely high accuracy of their molds, which reflected in the final product after assembly. For example, in the early days when the company manufactured plastic models using craftsmen's skills, Tamiya represented bolts very accurately as hexagonal posts, while other companies' products represented bolts as simple hemispheric protuberances. This level of detail and thoroughness with which they produced their models earned them a high reputation, including overseas.
Packaging
On early products, from 1961 to 1967, the box art was done by outsourced illustrators, including Shigeru Komatsuzaki. These box arts, which expanded the product image and had a feeling of "compositions of achievement" or "a story contained in a picture", further enhanced Tamiya's brand.
However, in an attempt to make the box art more accurate and visually precise, the 1968 racing car model appeared on a white background without scenery. This experiment turned out to be popular, and after that, Tamiya completely switched to white background art on their packaging (except for some aircraft and ship models).
Shigeru Komatsuzaki's box art, which had contributed to Tamiya's early image, has now almost disappeared from Tamiya's products due to the change in box art strategies and the discontinuation of former products.
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In the 1970s, some box art of model tanks contained images of items not included in the box. This became a problem when Tamiya began exporting these models internationally, due to false advertising laws. Tamiya dealt with this by erasing the items and retouching the backgrounds.
Timeline
1960 – 1:800 battleship Yamato, Tamiya's first plastic model. Due to the poor sales, Tamiya diverted the product to battleship Musashi.
1961 – 1:35 Panther tank, Tamiya's first tank model. Tamiya's famous 1:35 scale originates in the size of this motorized model (using two C batteries), which was 1:35 of the actual Panther tank by chance.
1964 – Tamiya established an in-house mold and die department.
1966 – Shunsaku Tamiya visited the United States Army Ordnance Museum for the first time for covering the tanks. The coverage result at this time became Tamiya's early underlying data for tank models. After this visit, Tamiya came to cover actual vehicles eagerly in the tank museums around the world, including the Bovington Tank Museum. While visiting the Aberdeen Tank Museum, Maryland, since no pictures or sketches of the classified tanks were permitted, Tamiya employees sketched all they could remember as soon as they left the grounds.
1967 – 1:12 Honda F-1; completed with the cooperation of Honda. The next year, this model was shown at the Nuremberg Toy Fair in Germany where Tamiya became the first Japanese model kit manufacturer to exhibit.
1968 – 1:35 German Tank Soldier Set; the first product in the Military Miniature Series.
1976 – 1:12 Porsche 934 Turbo RSR. Tamiya actually purchased a real Porsche 911 Turbo, dismantled it, and rebuilt it in order to better understand the car. Tamiya diverted the die to make a radio-controlled car (RC car) version of the Porsche 934. Although sale of the plastic model of the 1:12 Porsche 934 was poor, the RC car version was a great success. In 2006, Tamiya choose the 934 Turbo RSR as the product to commemorate the 30th anniversary of Tamiya's RC car series.
1980s – Tamiya introduced programmable logic controllers for moving models. These used a 4-bit microcontroller.
1986 – Hotshot Jr.; the first in the popular Racer Mini 4WD series.
From Wikipedia’s article on Tamiya Corporation, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4