How a Toyota 2000GT Ended Up in a Japanese Candy Box

Toyota 2000GT White Diorama from the Time Slip Glico Series by Kaiyodo

A Caramel Candy with a Diorama Inside

In the early 2000s, the Japanese confectionery company Ezaki Glico produced a series of miniature diorama sets under the name Time Slip Glico. The concept was to recreate scenes from Japan’s Showa period — roughly the 1950s through the 1970s — in highly detailed miniature form, bundled inside boxes of Glico caramel candy. Sculpting was handled by Kaiyodo, the Osaka-based studio known internationally for the precision of its figure work and its collaborations with candy and toy brands across Japan.

Each item in the series was designed as a complete diorama rather than a loose figure: a miniature vehicle, accompanying human figures, and a textured base that together create a self-contained scene. This Toyota 2000GT set presents a driving-date tableau from Japan’s motorization boom years. Two figures stand alongside the white sports car — a man in a light-purple shirt and green trousers, a woman in a white sleeveless top, mini skirt, and knee-high boots. The clothing faithfully represents youth fashion from the late 1960s to early 1970s. Neither figure is a character from anime or manga; they portray the anonymous young couples of the era, grounding the piece in everyday Showa life rather than fiction.

The Toyota 2000GT and Its Place in History

The car at the centre of the diorama — the Toyota 2000GT, chassis code MF10 — was produced between 1967 and 1970, developed jointly by Toyota and Yamaha Motor. Production numbers are cited differently across sources, but estimates cluster around 337 to 351 total units, making it one of the lowest-volume Japanese production cars of its era. Its international profile was established in part by the 1967 James Bond film You Only Live Twice, in which a specially converted open-top version appeared on screen. White was one of the 2000GT’s original production colours.

For anyone who follows automotive history, the 2000GT occupies a specific and well-documented place: Japan’s first internationally recognized sports car, produced in small numbers during the peak years of Japan’s postwar economic growth. That combination of rarity, visual distinctiveness, and documented pop-culture crossover has kept it a subject of genuine interest among classic car enthusiasts well outside Japan.

Shokugan and the Era That Shaped This Series

Shokugan — the Japanese term for candy sold with a miniature collectible — had existed since the 1980s, but the early 2000s marked a period of unusually high sculptural ambition for the format. The Time Slip Glico series arrived at the intersection of that quality surge and a contemporaneous Showa retro boom: a widespread cultural moment in Japan in which the design, fashions, and everyday objects of the postwar decades were being reconsidered and celebrated. The series was not built around anime licenses or fictional properties; its appeal rested entirely on the fidelity of its miniature representations of real vehicles and real daily life.

Because shokugan were distributed through grocery and convenience store channels within Japan — typically sold as blind-box purchases where the buyer did not know which piece was inside — the quantity that reached international markets was inherently limited. Kaiyodo’s involvement carries weight among collectors outside Japan; the studio’s reputation for treating even candy-box formats as vehicles for serious miniature craft has made its name a recognizable credential in figure-collecting communities across North America, Europe, and Asia.