Tokyo Toy Show 1995
On June 3rd and June 4th, the Tokyo Toy Show was open to the public, and was held in the large convention center in Makuhari Messe. There were around 170 exhibitors, made up of big toy companies (as Bandai, Tomy, Takara), computer game companies (as NEC, Sega, SNK), and other smaller companies. The doors opened at 9:00 and closed at 17:30. This show was to show off the new toys and goods that these companies were going to put out (and also the current line of goods). There were three large event stages where they ran many different kinds of shows. On June 3rd:
On June 4th:
Also, several of the large companies had set up stages in their own booths and held some special events. On both days, Tomy had Furil (Kyoko Hikami, Yukana Nogami, Yuko Miyamura), NEC had Mariko Onodera, and Pony Canyon had Miki Nagasawa in their booths for events. On June 3rd, Sega had Megumi Hayashibara and Kadokawa had Mitsuki Yayoi. On June 4th, Sega had Sakura Tange, Michiko Neya, and Nobutoshi Hayashi, Kadokawa had Hekiru Shiina, Miina Tominaga, Megumi Hayashibara, and Maria Kawamura, and Media Works had Hiroko Kasahara for events. On June 3rd, I just went to look at the toys and games. On June 4th, I went to see the seiyuu events. (^_^;;) The layout of the 1995 Toy Show was as follows.
west main east entrance entrance entrance +---------------------------------------------------------+ | 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 | | | | KSS Amada Tomy | | Bandai NEC SNK | | Compile Disney | | Matsushita Takara Bandai | | Namco Sega Pony C. | | Taito | +---------------------------------------------------------+ Makuhari Messe Convention Center June 3/SaturdayOn Saturday I went with the family to look at a lot of the toys. So we didn't go early. We arrived at around 10:00, and there was no line at all!We immediately went to the Tomy booth, as the first Furil event was supposed to start at 10:00. As expected it was VERY crowded. We just stayed for a little bit, and then we headed for the Bandai booth. The Bandai booth was the biggest one there. There were boys toys (Oh Ranger, Ultraman, etc), girls toys (Sailor Moon, Buurin, Marmalade Boy, etc), games, Gundam models, videos, cards, and lots of things. There were lots of dolls, including a big Buurin doll, a big Chibi Usa and Pegasus, and lots of other Sailor Moon dolls. There was even a girl who cosplayed as Chibi Moon. They had LOTS of Gundam models on display. They had a video tape of the three seiyuu games for the Playdia V. (Aya Hisakawa, Rica Fukami, Mika Kanai) Banpresto even had the 100 Ultraman monster UFO catcher doll set on display. (They are releasing 10 per month.) They also had the new set of Marmalade Boy cards on display. Then we went to the Tomy booth. This was a pretty big booth too. The Furil event had ended, so there weren't that many people. They gave away a small Wedding Peach bag. It's very colorful and nice. The girls toys centered around Wedding Peach. I forgot what kind of boys toys they had. (^_^;;) They did have many games set up. They had the Magic Knight Rayearth Game Boy and Super Famicom games. After Tomy, we walked around and looked at various smaller booths.
The Takara booth was a very large one, and it had lots of boys
and girls toys. The main one was Chibi Maruko-chan.
I was disappointed as they didn't have any Akazukin Chacha stuff.
(Last year they even had a girl cosplay as the magical princess.)
But they did have a small corner on Nurse Angel Ririka SOS.
This will be a TV show starting this summer.
Ririka is VERY cute!!
In the Pony Canyon booth, they had a lot of kids stuff, but they also had a little corner on their OAVs and LDs. They had a couple large Ranma panels, some pictures of Key, and lots of small pictures of Yuuyuu Hakusho. The Amada booth had lots of PP cards and Hero Collection cards on display, as well as puzzles and other items. The video game section was very crowded. NEC, SNK, Sega, Namco, Matsushita, Bandai (for Pippin) had large booths. Kadokawa, Capcom, Media Works, Human, KSS, and others had smaller booths. Most of the booths has lots of games set up so people can play them. There were long lines for these games, as the kids just wanted to play the new games for free. They had both TV games and arcade games. In the Compile booth, they had a Puyo Puyo tournament and it was very, very crowded. They also had a Puyo Puyo cosplay show. An idol (I think) Mami Inoue came as a guest during the cosplay show. [I took some pictures.. ^_^;;] Some of the Puyo Puyo cosplay people were pretty good. The Human booth had a little stage, but there were no seiyuu events.. (unfortunately) But there was a little poster board for the Twilight Syndrome game, with a tiny picture of Kikuko Inoue. (^_^;) They had pamphlets containing information about their games, and they had a little picture of Inoue. (^_^;;) There were various seiyuu and game events at some of the booths, but they were all crowded, so I didn't go to them. The events at Sega and Kadokawa required tickets. There was another Furil event at the Tomy booth at 15:00, so I went to that one. It was very crowded, and I had to look over many people's shoulders, but I was able to see the event. The Furil event flowed as follows.
The Furil girls all dressed up in wedding gowns!! It was the same style and colors as the anime. VERY pretty. Kyoko Hikami was very cute. Each Furil event (held three times/day) was basically the same.
June 4/SundayOn Sunday, I woke up very early and got to Makuhari before 8:00. (Makuhari is 1.5 hours away from my house.) Of course there were many thousands of people who had arrived earlier. I went to the west entrance, which had a smaller line than the main entrance.At 9:00, they started letting the people in, and I was able to get in around 9:10. I immediately rushed to the NEC booth, and saw many people already sitting in front of the stage. I quickly grabbed a spot for myself. The first event at the NEC booth was going to start at 10:00. It was a game related event, and most people weren't interested. (^_^;) At 11:00, there was supposed to be an event with Sakura Tange, so everyone was just waiting for that one. But at 11:00 the event started, and they had a bunch of semi-cute flashy dancers. There was no Sakura Tange! (;_;) [But I took some pictures anyway..] I found out later that Sakura was at the Sega booth doing an event over there.. So after the disappointing event at NEC, I went to Tomy. They hadn't started letting the people in for the 13:00 Furil event yet. So I just waited. The whole front section was reserved for kids, and the two rows in the back was for non-kids. At 12:30 or so, they let some people in, so I got a decent spot. Only 20 or so people were able to fit in, and everyone else had to stand and watch from the sides or the back. At 13:00 the Furil event started. I was in a great location... but they didn't allow pictures or videos, so I couldn't take any pictures. (;_;) I need to have a camera embedded into my eyes. The event was the same as before. After the Furil event, I had nothing to do until the Quo Vadis event (at the Sega booth, 15:45), so I wandered over to the Pony Canyon booth to see if there was anything interesting going on. When I got to the Pony Canyon booth, I met some of my Internet friends. We were just standing and talking (around 14:00), when they said that they would pass out numbers for the Miki Nagasawa signing session at 15:00! What luck! So I got ticket number 17. (I think they passed out around 30 in total.) Then we went to the Sega booth as they were going to pass out numbers for the Quo Vadis event at 14:45. There were a lot of people already, but they were there waiting for a different event. At 14:45, I got ticket number 52 (they were going to pass out 100). Then we went back to the Pony Canyon booth for the Miki Nagasawa signing. They gave out pizza boxes containing hexagon shaped flyers for Ranma, Key, Yuuyuu Hakusho, and some other anime. Miki Nagasawa was dressed as a pizza delivery girl. (In the anime Key, Miki does the voice of a pizza delivery girl, Sakura.) Miki was going to sign the boxes or the Key flyer. I had her sign the Key flyer, which has a picture of Key and Sakura. This was held completely in the open, so anyone who wanted to was able to see Miki, and take pictures of her. I just took a few pictures. After the signing session, we went back to the Sega booth and waited for the Quo Vadis event. They let us in around 15:30, and the event started on time. The event was held in a closed off section of the Sega booth, so anyone without tickets could not see any part of the event at all. The guests for the event were Michiko Neya, Nobutoshi Hayashi, and the president of Grams, the company that makes the Quo Vadis game for the Sega Saturn. It was a simple talk session where they talked about the game, and they showed some parts of the game on the screen. There was a short section where Michiko and Nobutoshi did live voices for the characters on the screen. At the end there were some presents given away, but nobody that I knew got anything. This event lasted for around 40 minutes. There weren't any more seiyuu events, so I just took a final look at the interesting booths and left.
impressionsOverall, Saturday is the best day to go. Sunday is just too crowded. But there are more events on Sunday, and there is plenty to see, so going both days is recommended. (^_^;)It is a lot of fun!
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