Takara Co., Ltd. (株式会社タカラ) was a Japanese toy company founded in 1955. In March 2006, the company merged with Tomy Co., Ltd. to form Takara Tomy. The Takara motto was 遊びは文化」("playing is culture"). Products Toys In 1967, Takara produced the first generation of the Licca-chan doll, which was 21 centimeters tall and had the last name of Kayama, inspired by the musician Yuzo Kayama and actress Yoshiko Kayama. In 1975, Takara produced the Diaclone and Microman Micro Change toys. In 1984, the toy line was rebranded by Hasbro as "Transformers", which made Takara waste no time joining in. Takara continued to sell Microman and used it as the basis for the Micronauts toy line. Micronauts were sold internationally by the Mego Corporation. Other transforming toys made by Takara include Brave, Dennō Bōkenki Webdiver, and Daigunder. Both Webdiver and Daigunder toys could interact with TV screens, which proved only but a fad in the early 2000s. Takara also invented Battle Beasts, the E-kara karaoke microphone, B-Daman and Beyblade. These toys were sold or distributed internationally by Hasbro. In 1978, Takara developed the Choro-Q, mini pullback cars. Internationally, they have been sold as "Penny Racers". Software Takara developed and published video games. In the 1990s, Takara published the Chibi Maruko-chan video games. The company ported (adapted) some of the SNK Neo Geo based arcade games for 8 and 16-bit consoles. These included the Fatal Fury and the Samurai Shodown series. They were sold for use with the Sega Genesis, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, the Game Boy, or the Famicom. In 2003, Takara contributed to the production of the game, Seek-and-Destroy. Takara published the 3D computer graphics fighting game series Battle Arena Toshinden, developed by Tamsoft. Small games developers such as Tamsoft, BHE, E-game and KID corp, were sometimes omitted from the credits on a game's Takara packaging or title screens. Also that year, Takara purchased a controlling stake in the publicly traded software publisher Atlus. Some Takara properties were licensed to and published by Atlus. In 2006, after the merger with Tomy, the controlling stake in Atlus was sold to Index Holdings, Takara Tomy's major shareholder. Takara-branded product licenses such as Licca-chan, Jinsei Game, The Game of Life and Choro-Q were returned to Takara Tomy's consumer software division. The merged company also produced the Zoids and the Naruto series. Life entertainment products Takara has manufactured several unusual gadgets marketed as "life