Founded in Japan in the 1920s, Tomy is one of the largest toy companies in the world. Some of their most well known products are Tomica, a system of high detail die cast vehicles, and Plarail, a motorized plastic toy train system with recognizable light blue train tracks. Tomy would first produce Thomas toys for their Asian Plarail system and western Tomy Trains system. Tomy merged with Takara in 2006, and in some regions the company is branded as Takara Tomy. Takara Tomy also purchased RC2 and all of it's subsidiaries including Learning Curve in 2011. Takara Tomy was an interested party for the sale of HiT Entertainment, although Mattel would complete the purchase. Since then, very few Takara Tomy toys based on Thomas are available in western regions, but because of Sony's ownership of Thomas in Japan, Takara Tomy continues to produce and design new Thomas products in some Asian markets.