Description

Vintage Namura Toys WIND-UP SNIFFING DOG w/ Box TN Made in Japan mechanical. Box is in good shape and the toy works as intended. It goes without saying that if there were no World War II, there would have been no anime series called Space Battleship Yamato. But it should also be pointed out that if not for very specific shifts in global commerce after World War II, the first line of Yamato toys would not have been made by a company called Nomura. And that takes some explaining. Prior to the war, tin was the material of choice for most of the world’s toys. Cheap and malleable, it was easy to bend and form into whimsical shapes that would paradoxically be durable enough to take the usual punishment a kid would dish out. And if you had a tin toy back then, the raw materials probably came from Nuremberg, Germany: the global nerve center of the tinplate trade. After the war, Germany lost its grip on this trade (along with much else) and it floated around the globe to land on the one other nation that could most benefit from it: Japan. Under the American occupation from 1945 to ’52, a host of new companies with names like Marusan and Bandai eagerly sprung up to become the new suppliers of tin toys to the rest of the world. (Ironically, many of these toys would romanticize the very military machinery that had brought Japan to heel, but that’s another story entirely.) “Made in Japan” would become a famous catchphrase during these years, first in the pejorative sense and then slowly, grudgingly, a sign of quality as things improved. And on some of the best toys, that phrase was accompanied by the initials T.N: the callsign for Toys Nomura. I ship next day and will combine shipping. Pictures are part of the description.