Generations of of children — and more than a few adults — have been both frustrated and fascinated by the toys sold by the company made famous by Shunsaku Tamiya. The Shizuoka-born son of a lumber merchant, Tamiya helped transform his father’s firm into one of the world’s leading manufacturers of kit set models and radio-controlled cars. Tamiya kits were not easy to assemble — the chairman insisted on rigorous and often fiddly attention to detail so as to achieve his aim of his models being as authentic as the machines they were modelled on.
Tamiya often photographed or bought and transported back to Japan the machines for his scale models. The first Tamiya kit, a Jaguar sports car, was released in the 1960s and it was followed by a fleet of cars, planes, tanks, trucks and ships.
Tamiya was appointed president of the firm in 1977, a firm which by then had expanded world-wide. Key to the firm’s success was its authentic box art, setting a standard few amateur model makers could match — although they enjoyed the challenge.
A company statement said that Tamiya — who died on July 18 aged 90 — was ‘‘a kid at heart to the very end” — Allied Media
