Fumihiko Takahara from Takara Tomy

Ollie Barder

At the recent Beyblade World Championships, I was able to sit down and talk with Fumihiko Takahara at Takara Tomy about why their toys have such long-term appeal.

Takahara is a Senior Executive Officer and Head of Character Business at Takara Tomy, so he is the ideal person to ask about various toy lines, such as Beyblade, Transformers, and Diaclone.

Starting off with Beyblade, I wanted to ask why the series has seen such huge success internationally over multiple decades.

“There are two answers for this; first, I think Beyblade has seen such international success because, since its launch in 1999, it has consistently delivered attractive elements, such as customizability, strong functionality, and collectability, which have kept fans around the world engaged for over 25 years. The second reason is that Beyblade is about battling spinning tops, and this also has a lot of history worldwide, with it said that they go so far back as 2000 BC in Egypt. So, I believe people around the world respond to this kind of physical, head-to-head battle in a non-verbal, almost instinctive way.

“Whereas for Transformers and Diaclone, our partnership with Hasbro is the most important part of this. As you know, the original Diaclone series turned into Transformers. Whereas Hasbro turned Transformers into an IP, with animation and comics. So, Hasbro really knew how to market these toys. That means we create the toys themselves, exchange our thoughts with Hasbro, and they market them globally.”

What’s interesting about Takara Tomy’s toy brands is how they manage to bridge age demographics, with both children and adults still buying these toys.

“In terms of age groups for Beyblade, we don’t change our approach to customers based on that, even if they are older or younger. For Beyblade, the World Championships say it all because it can be enjoyed by both adults and children, regardless of their country or age. So there’s just one universal product. Previously, we did try to market to different age groups with prior iterations of Beyblade, but now we don’t change anything in the marketing.

“However, Transformers is a bit different from Beyblade in this regard, because there are different toy lines to cater to different people. That means it is structured differently in terms of the animation or movies, with those being targeted at adults or children. The big thing here, though, is that it’s very important to gain the interest of children, because as they grow up with Transformers, they tend to stay with it.

“We also have a new hobby brand, which was created about a year ago, called T-Spark, and this is aimed much more at adults who, as children, couldn’t necessarily afford the bigger toys, but now they can.”

The fascinating part for me is that Takara Tomy has managed to bridge these age groups, but a lot of that is down to Takara Tomy’s brand longevity, as Takahara explains.

“As for how we manage to cater to both children and adults, we don’t really think about that, and it doesn’t feel unusual for us. However, now that you mention it, I start to realize that what we are doing is a bit different and unique. Part of this is maybe down to the fact that we have a lot of brands that have a long history behind them, with children growing up with these toys. However, we also like hearing from adults who have come to our products recently.

“A good example of this is the new Diaclone toys. We’ve started to distribute these in Asia, and they are already very popular. For Europe and the US, we have teamed up with Tomy International for distribution. We are currently planning on strengthening the marketing and PR for this.

“In addition, at Anime Expo, we had set up an area where people could play Beyblade, and we also had booths for T-Spark and gacha-related toys. However, for things like the new Diaclone toys, Beyblade, and Zoids, we are thinking about doing something new with those in the future.

“We know that anime is a very effective approach, but there are a lot of things we can’t talk about right now; however, we have plans for the future. For example, we do have a lot of older anime that have not been localized into English. Through Tomy International, we will also be expanding our toy lines in the US and European markets, which will be a big part of this.”

Follow me on X, Facebook and YouTube. I also manage Mecha Damashii and am currently featured in the Giant Robots exhibition currently touring Japan.