Takara has certainly had a tumultous past few months. The toyco has seen CEO Sato Keita step down after majority shareholder Konami pressured him to take responsibility for poor recent performances. Sato, once acclaimed as Takara’s number one salesman and credited for saving the near-bankrupt toyco, was then given a largely ceremonial chairman role. A few months later, Konami washed its hands of Takara and mobile phone content distributor Index Corp stepped in to become the majority shareholder. And now the merger with Tomy.

IT Media’s News section seems to have the best article about the merger with colourful little details not found in English-language reports. One photograph of a grim Sato has a caption describing the Takara man as being initially reluctant to smile despite repeated requests.

Sato ought to be smiling a little, though. The merger of Tomy and Takara sees him take on a more hands-on role as VP in the new company which is to be named Takara Tomy in Japanese and Tomy Co. in English. (It’s strange that the company would be named differently in different languages but it’s not without precedent. For instance, Bandai Namco is to be known as Namco Bandai in English.) Asked about the reason for the English name, Sato gave an “Eh?”-eliciting answer: Tomy had a wonderful property in “Tomy UK”.

The suggestion for the merger apparently came from Sato after discussions with Index CEO Ochiai Masami about Takara’s management policy. A merger with Tomy had been considered earlier but given the long proud histories of both companies, this was easier suggested than accomplished. Negotiations may have taken only a week but it was far from smooth; it was revealed discussions got so heated everyone walked out in a huff during talks.

I wonder how things are going to work out on the designer level. One is reminded of Hasbro’s acquisition of Kenner in 1991. Kenner employees took creative control of the GI Joe franchise and came up with Sgt. Savage. On the other hand, Kenner employees also came up with the highly-successful Beast Wars reboot of the Transformers franchise.

I just hope Takara’s designers aren’t so alienated in the new company that they jump ship. Far-fetched? Bear in mind, short-lived Takara CEO Okude Noboyuki once did exactly that during Sato Hirohisa’s unsuccessful tenure at Takara.

Toy Directory has an article discussing the toy industry and how it’s being affected by “age compression”. The article mostly retreads old ground — age compression has been a factor for several years now — but this line caught my eye:

In 2004, 14 percent of the 127 million units of action figures bought in the United States were done so by and for adults …

Facts and numbers about the adult collector segment of the action figure market are hard to come by so it was nice to get this.

Now, 14 per cent might not seem like much but bear in mind the action figure (and accessories) category saw US$1.2 billion in sales in 2004. This means adults bought about US$168 million worth of action figures last year. That’s just the action figure category of the toy industry. And that’s just in the US.