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Saturday, May 7, 2016

(Updated photos) The dearth of Minivans in the die-cast world... so thank goodness for Tomica...!

Minivans....  One of the most ubiquitous types of cars on the road, but easily the most under-represented type of car in die-cast. 

If you ignore the VW vans (which due to the coolness factor of VW Transporters are the most modeled minivan brand), and the full-size vans (again which have a slightly higher coolness quotient), there are VERY few mainstream castings of minivans such as Ford Windstars, Kia Sedonas, Nissan Quests, etc....

1.  Matchbox did the original '84 Dodge Caravan (the car the launched and still defined the actual mini-van market in the USA) in the '80s.  My casting was the black one to the right (actual example from my childhood collection - though now I've also got it in white), and it was an important piece of my collection, in no small part since my family had an '85 Plymouth Voyager (identical to a Caravan).  This casting was a pretty nice casting, with a working sliding side door (Matchbox' first and possibly only ever sliding door).  Plus it had the chunkier truck wheels on it, giving it a bit more of an SUV/off-road look, which was a whole lot nicer than the factory K-Car wheels with plastic wheel covers that our real family car came with... 

2.  Hot Wheels brought out a slightly customized late '90s Dodge Caravan in the late '90s.  The one I've got is in maroon with heavily tinted windows and overly radical 3 spoke alloy wheels, not sure if it came in other colors.  While it's not a favorite casting of mine, it still is a decent effort and worthy of mention in this severely under-done segment.   

3.  And a recent addition, the Matchbox Ford Transit Connect.

From the mainstream Matchbox and Hot Wheels brands over the last 30 years, that's it for non-VW-minivans...  Very sad! 

If we expand to other toy brands, we get:

4.  The late '80s Pontiac Transport from Majorette (in blue on the right), which unfortunately had the un-realistic see-through roof that robbed the car of realism... 

5.  The Toyota Hi-Ace from Majorette, which came with an opening lift-gate. 

6.  Maisto had a beige European-market Ford Galaxy, that was done in typical Maisto cheapness, but was at least another entry into the list...   

I can't think of any Johnny Lightning or Greenlight or Racing Champion models...

7.  I think I've got a late '90s Ford Galaxy/VW Sharon (same car) from Siku buried some place in the collection, but I'm not sure I'm able to pull it out quickly... 

In sum, 7 castings, from all but 1 of the major die-cast producers, over the 30 years since the original Caravan/Voyager came out!  The point I'm hopefully effectively making is that for such a popular car type, it is amazingly un-modeled in the die-cast world. 

Enter the minivan savior...  ...Tomica! 

In the last 25 years, Tomica has produced well over 25 distinct minivan castings, with multiple spin-off variations that could be considered unique models on their own, like the police, road crew and ambulance variations.  If I include the recent slew of hard-to-categorize cars that might be small minivans or tall station wagons (Toyota Ipsum, etc.), the number could easily pass 35....  On top of that, most of the castings have opening features - usually a sliding door or an opening tailgate.  Wow.  In short, if you're a collector who wants a diverse slate of car types, and who values unique and well-modeled castings, you NEED to consider expanding your Tomica collection. 


As has been mentioned earlier in this blog, one of the really impressive things about Tomica is that they are constantly updating their castings.  I've got 3 unique Toyota Alphards, all amazing in a crème white, representing 3 different generations of Toyota Alphards (shown at right in order of release, with the black the most recent).  Even if the Alphard changed its looks dramatically over those 3 generations, that would still be shocking attention to detail from any other toy-maker.  However the Alphard DIDN'T change it's looks dramatically with each re-fresh.  But Tomica STILL felt the need to bring out a new casting for each generation...  For context, Matchbox NEVER updated their Caravan casting, continuing to sell the original casting after Dodge had re-freshed, and then entirely re-designed, the real Caravan...




I've got 3 different castings of Honda Stepwagons, with the oldest (light blue below) casting in 3 colors and the newest (dark blus below) casting in 2...  ...And that doesn't count the other Honda minivans, including Odyssey and Elysian...



































































1 of my favorite Tomica minivans of all time (and one of the first that I found - which might explain my fascination with it) is this Mazda Bongo.  I think I like it so much due both to the boxy (VW Eurovan-esque) shape of it, as well as the Eurovan-Westphalia-esque pop-up roof (maybe another comparison test is in order - again with the Hot Wheels "Sundowner" Vanagon matched up against this Bongo in the battle of the pop-up roof minivan campers!).























Tomica has done 2 generations of the Nissan El-Grand, both of which come in both normal consumer (I've got the old one in white and the new one in black) as well as yellow safety car guise, allowing this crazy photo of 2 generations of El Grand safety cars (newest on the left).  While the older El Grand's large size made it a favorite of mine (I have it in white - and it looks so nice against the equivalently sized Alphard!), the new El Grand is noticeably smaller (though it claims to be in the same 1/64 scale) and has no opening features, making it a bit of a disappointment.






















Another favorite Tomica minivan is the Mitsubishi Dilica - just a cool looking van, sporting silver and sage-green paint in my collection.






The Mitsubishi Grandis isn't quite as nice looking, though it is still a worthy effort and a good model.  I have it in white and light blue.























I have 2 generations of Nissan Serena's - the older in silver and bronze and white, the newer in an eggplant purple.  I like the older one a bit more - there is more detail in it.






















My least favorite Tomica minivans are these Toyota Estimas.  I might dislike it so much due to the bland beige paint that I have it in...  Amazingly, Tomica offered the newer one in almost the same color of off-putting paint, allowing me to not like it in both generations....





This Honda Elysion (in light blue) is another highly regarded Tomica minivan of mine...











These Toyota Noah's come in 3 colors, though one of them is tagged as a Voxy instead - with a unique number on the baseplate.  However they are all the same identical casting.








A Mazda MPV (in red) and a Toyota Wish (blue) are 2 additional reasonable minivans by Tomica.  The detail is nice and they are definitively collectible, though I don't like either ENOUGH to make them favorites of mine (even though I actually owned a real MPV for a while).





Then there are these 2 unfavorites from Honda - the Airwave (blue) and the Odyssey (white).  Mostly I dislike their size - they seem too low for a minivan.










As I get to the end of this amazing list, I wanted to show another favorite casting, the Toyota Probox, in 3 different versions...  I like the looks of this casting a lot, and really appreciate the 3 versions.







And finally, no discussion of Tomica minivans would be complete without the most prototypical of all Japanese minivans, the Toyota Hi-Ace...  I could only find 2 castings of the Hi-Ace, though I'm willing to be that I'm missing a few...  In fact I know that I'm missing at least one, which is on order and being shipped from Japan as I type...


Well, that's close to a wrap on the die-cast minivan situation.  A remarkably under-represented segment of modeled cars by the major toy makers, with Tomica utterly saving and utterly dominating the market.  And if anyone from Tomica is reading this - then here is my request for you to do the Hyundai H1 - a ubiquitous and cleanly styled minivan seen everywhere in the Caribbean and Latin America....

P .S.  There is one other minivan producer - from a quality toy maker that I often forget about due to their complete lack of a US presence...  ...and that of course is Norev.  On a trip to France around 2010 I picked up every Norev that I could find, including several minivans...  All were models of French vans - Renaults and Peugeots.  But this discussion of Norevs is probably worthy of its own post someday...




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