One essential theme for the TOMY Group is ensuring that future generations inherit
a planet where children around the world can smile and enjoy playing with toys.
We are striving to create environmentally conscious products and packaging
by improving upon our materials and designs.
Here, we showcase some of our eco-conscious products together
with insights from our developers!
No batteries needed, all aboard!
Te-cology Charge
Te-cology Charge is the first series*1 that has made it possible to run PLARAIL trains on electricity without using a battery. The secret is our Te-cology Charge System (patent pending*2 ), where electricity to power the train is generated as the wheels rotate when the locomotive is moved back and forth by hand. For children, generating the energy themselves makes it both a fun and learning experience, and they can enjoy playing with the trains as many times as they like without using any batteries.
Products in the Te-cology Charge series are also certified Eco Toys(in Japanese) as part of the TOMY Group’s mission to create environmentally conscious toys.
How is it electric without batteries?
The secret is our Te-cology Charge System
TOMY PLARAIL Business GroupWataru Ito (left), Brands Marketing Team
Toshiyuki Kitaura (right), R&D Team
This product was developed after considering how we could create a PLARAIL train that children can play with by themselves over and over again without using batteries.
Some of the challenges during development were designing mechanical parts to generate and store energy that also fit inside a PLARAIL train, finding an energy-efficient motor that could ensure a significant distance, and formulating a way to generate the electricity.
Technological improvements made it possible to reduce the size of the mechanisms and motor so that they were small enough to fit inside a PLARAIL train, but we also had to find a way to make the repetitive act of charging the train into something that is fun for children.
Our focus turned to how kids like to roll PLARAIL around by hand.
We thought it would be both fun and easy for children to understand the concept if they could see for themselves how rolling the trains generated electricity that gets stored inside.
We thus used a mechanism that generates power when the trains are rolled back and forth, and added an LED light that shows how much electricity is stored up based on how bright it shines.
We hope that this product is a fun way for kids to experience creating electricity and using it to power PLARAIL trains.
TOMY
Overseas Group
Build-A-Johnny Tractor
Our overseas business division TOMY International has eliminated all plastic blisters in packages for the Build a Johnny Tractor starting with the December 2021 series. They estimate that this redesign of how products are affixed to the packaging will reduce the amount of plastic used by a total of over 25 tons in the approximately two years leading up to October 2023.
TOMY InternationalBill Walters (left), Jen Wulfekuhle (right)
Eliminating plastic in this package is only the beginning for our team in our environmental journey. This project has led us to make conscious efforts in drastically reducing or completely eliminating plastic for future packages. We are also planning to work on further subsequent eco initiatives. It is truly exciting to fully realize how much of an environmental difference you can make in the world with these simple changes.
Environment Task Force
initiatives
The Technological Development Division and other members of the Environment Task Force’s plastic subcommittee have been researching over 30 different types of environmentally conscious materials in the year since it was established. The members have also set internal environmental targets for reducing use of petroleum-based plastics, and are leading efforts to do so throughout the entire TOMY Group.
We will continue to report the Task Force’s progress in the Sustainability section of our website.
