In today's post, we will take a look at a Japanese toy catalogue from the late 1970s and the Nintendo products included in it. You may be surprised by how many we will find!
The catalogue was published by Kiddy Land (キデイランド), a well-known Japanese toy store chain that has been around for decades, with its most famous location being the flagship store in Harajuku, Tokyo.
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| The Kiddy Land store in Harajuku (photo taken in 2006) |
The catalogue was released in November 1977, just in time for the Christmas and New Year season, a time of increased gift-giving and toy purchasing. The front cover prominently displays the word "toys" in Japanese ("おもちゃ").
Readers of this blog will undoubtedly recognize the object of fascination for the pair of children depicted on the front: the Nintendo Color TV Game 15, one of Nintendo's earliest home consoles. It had just been released in June of 1977 and was one of the hot toys of the time.
The catalogue begins with a welcome message from the Kiddy Land team, which includes the following:
Kiddy Land specializes in toys. From baby toys to games and sports equipment, we offer a wide variety of products. We hope you will enjoy choosing toys from the comfort of your home, and to help with that, we have created this toy catalog as a handy guide. We believe you will find it useful. Whether it's traditional New Year's toys or Christmas presents, we have a diverse range of toys to meet your needs.
The catalogue consists of 36 color pages and is roughly A4 in size.
Like most traditional toy catalogues, it is organized by age and has separate "Girls" and "Boys" sections.
The Nintendo toys are located toward the back of the catalog, in sections aimed at older children and families.
On page 21 we spot the first Nintendo item, the Ultra Machine Deluxe baseball pitching machine. The original Ultra Machine was released in 1967, but the version included here is the 1977 re-release, featuring a modern redesign.
Flipping a few pages to the "hobby" section, we discover some of Nintendo's Kôsenjû (光線銃) or light gun games, referred to here as "electric eye sharp shooter" games.
Labelled "2" below are the 1976 Custom Gunman (カスタム ガンマン) and Customer Lion (カスタム ライオン), and the Custom Rifle first released in 1971. The "from" price of ¥5,000 refers to the Rifle, while the Gunman and Lion sets (both of which included a gun) retailed for ¥7,500 each. More information about these items you can find here and here.
The item labelled "4" in the picture above is Nintendo's electro-mechanical Duck Hunt (ダックハント) set from 1976. It was the most sophisticated light gun game of its time, and, at ¥9,500, also the most expensive. More information about that game, including the way it works, can be found here.
Moving to the board game section, we find another Nintendo product.
At the bottom of page 28, the Disney Family Game Assortment Deluxe (ディズニー 家庭盤 デラックス) by Nintendo is shown, although it is mistakenly attributed to competitor Hanayama (はなやま).
The next page features even more Nintendo products.
The lower part of the page shows an array of card games, both traditional Hanafuda and Western-style playing card sets. Many of these are produced by Nintendo, including the Hello Kitty and Snoopy sets. We also recognize Nintendo's Daitouryou (大統領) or "president" brand Hanafuda cards, which feature a picture of Napoleon Bonaparte on the front.
Finally, on the back cover, we see the hottest toys of the season: video games. All of these are essentially Pong clones or derivatives, produced by Japanese companies such as Tomy, Bandai, Epoch, and Nintendo.
Nintendo released its Color TV Game 6 and the more versatile Color TV Game 15 in the summer of 1977.
It was undoubtedly one of the most coveted toys in the catalog, earning its special placement on the back.
These first video game consoles were commercially successful for Nintendo, and by the 1980s, Nintendo's presence in toy catalogs would further expand, focusing almost exclusively on video games, including Game & Watch, the Famicom / NES and the Game Boy.
However, in 1977, Nintendo was clearly still on the verge of that shift, as evidenced by the wide variety of products included in this catalogue.
If you liked this post, you may also enjoy reading about this Nintendo toys leaflet from 1975.
hi, very interesting to see a toy catalog with nintendo articles with other toys
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