Tomica No.29 and How Japan’s Panda Trucks Became Famous

Tomica No.29 — Mitsubishi Fuso Canter in Sakai Moving Livery

Japan’s Longest-Running Diecast Series

Tomica launched in 1970 under Tomy — known today as Takaratomy after a 2006 merger — and has been Japan’s dominant 1/64-scale diecast line ever since. More than fifty years on, the lineup is still active, organized by sequential numbers that rotate as new vehicle subjects come and go. Around 2002, the No.29 slot in the standard range belonged to this Sakai Moving edition of the Mitsubishi Fuso Canter. That was typical of Tomica’s approach: the line has always included commercial trucks bearing the liveries of real Japanese companies alongside passenger cars, putting Yamato Transport, Sagawa Express, and Sakai Moving on the same shelf as mainstream hatchbacks and sedans. In 2002, Tomy was still operating independently; the Takaratomy merger that changed the brand’s corporate structure came four years later.

Sakai Moving, the Mitsubishi Canter, and One Famous Panda

Sakai Hikkoshi Center Co., Ltd. — better known by its trading name Sakai Moving — was founded in Osaka in 1976 and has grown into one of Japan’s largest household-moving companies. The business is recognized across the country by the panda painted on every truck in its fleet, appearing on the cab spoiler and across the cargo box sides alongside yellow-background lettering reading “Hikkoshi no Sakai.” This No.29 reproduces that livery faithfully at 1/64 scale.

The panda connection has roots in a specific moment in Japanese history. In 1972, China gifted two giant pandas — Kang Kang and Lan Lan — to Ueno Zoo in Tokyo. The event sparked an extraordinary wave of public enthusiasm, and moving companies operating in the years that followed began associating themselves with panda imagery. Whether Sakai adopted the panda as an independent creative decision or as part of a broader industry trend is a matter of some debate, but the outcome is unmistakable: the brand and the image have been inseparable for decades. Today, a white truck with a large panda on the side is one of the more reliable signs that someone in the neighborhood is moving house.

The vehicle underneath the livery is the Mitsubishi Fuso Canter, a light-to-medium commercial truck manufactured continuously since 1963. By 2002 it was among Japan’s most common commercial vehicles, used across delivery, logistics, and moving. Mitsubishi Fuso also operates internationally across Europe, Asia, and Africa, giving the nameplate some recognition outside Japan as well.

Commercial Livery Tomica and the Collectors Who Follow Them

Tomica has always served both children and adult collectors, and the two audiences have coexisted in the brand’s culture from early on. When a numbered model rotates out of the standard lineup, it no longer appears in new production — this No.29 fits that description. Company-livery commercial trucks from this era are often described by collectors as precise records of Japan’s everyday visual environment: the specific truck silhouettes, the corporate markings, and the period details that would have been entirely unremarkable to see on a city street at the time. This Sakai Moving Canter captures one corner of that world — a 1/64-scale version of the panda truck that Japanese people have passed on the road for most of their lives, now frozen in diecast at the moment it was current.