Hi Super,
There are indeed several manufacturers of these capsule toys, I've seen Tomy (obviously), Epoch, Yujin and some others I can't remember.
The ranges are also a lot bigger than you'd expect, there is the obvious Tomy Thomas range/sets as well as some Tomy 'real world' trains (shinkansens/suburbans etc...).
But in addition if you go 'off piste' and try the other ranges you can find other stuff as well, for example the Epoch range are modelled around the real world trains, but the big difference is that some instead of being wind-ups are actually powered. You often get a lead car with an LED light, motor car in one of the mid-cars, and on some sets a trailing car with different colour LED.
Also in the Epoch range are some interesting buildings which have a motion detector which apparently then causes them to produce some sounds of some sort. The interesting thing about these is that maybe they could be cannibalised to produce the circuitry we were discussing to provide say lights at a crossing or something.
In the Yujin range I've noticed that they have clones of the Tomy Hyper Guardian range in capsule scale as well as some other stuff, how legal they are I don't know but you see them in the auctions. You can also get Chuggington for anyone interested, although I think they are genuine Tomy from what i recall
There are indeed several manufacturers of these capsule toys, I've seen Tomy (obviously), Epoch, Yujin and some others I can't remember.
The ranges are also a lot bigger than you'd expect, there is the obvious Tomy Thomas range/sets as well as some Tomy 'real world' trains (shinkansens/suburbans etc...).
But in addition if you go 'off piste' and try the other ranges you can find other stuff as well, for example the Epoch range are modelled around the real world trains, but the big difference is that some instead of being wind-ups are actually powered. You often get a lead car with an LED light, motor car in one of the mid-cars, and on some sets a trailing car with different colour LED.
Also in the Epoch range are some interesting buildings which have a motion detector which apparently then causes them to produce some sounds of some sort. The interesting thing about these is that maybe they could be cannibalised to produce the circuitry we were discussing to provide say lights at a crossing or something.
In the Yujin range I've noticed that they have clones of the Tomy Hyper Guardian range in capsule scale as well as some other stuff, how legal they are I don't know but you see them in the auctions. You can also get Chuggington for anyone interested, although I think they are genuine Tomy from what i recall
Happily collecting things all my life... 