TakaraTomy is a Japanese toy company. They are the producer of Transformers in Japan, and design much of the engineering for Transformers toys. Takara was originally founded by Yasuta Satoh in 1955. One of their first successes was securing the license for releasing Mattel's "Barbie" series on the Japanese market. After a first test release of the US toys to a small test market in Japan apparently turned out to be successful, Takara decided to cancel Microman and Diaclone and henceforth started to release the "Transformers" in Japan as well.