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Tonka Toys (230w)

Simplicity Imports Australia Principal Alan Wilkinson was a rep for Kubota dealership Elliots of Dandenong at that time. “People would come up to me and say: ‘What do you use them for?’ And I’d tell them they were designed for use on small blocks or inside greenhouses – but they’d just go off muttering ‘Tonka Toys’.” Then overseas reports started dribbling back here about the growth of the compact market overseas. Rumours of major American Suppliers jumping into bed with Japanese compact manufacturers: Massey with Toyosha/Hinomoto, John Deere with Yanmar, Ford with Shibaura, International Harvester with Mitsubishi, FMC Bolens with Iseki….Maybe there was something in this new breed of highly-engineered mini unit after all? To a Tractor Industry only familiar with machinery in an agricultural context, it seemed natural that tractors would be purchased by some sort of farmer – but they couldn’t work out what one.

Overseas, it appeared that these units were being bought by a strange creature called the “Hobby Farmer”. Suppliers immediately began seeking an indigenous version of the species in their alleged habitat of high-rise Collins, Pitt, Queen, Rundle and Hay Street offices. They spent much time and money in this pursuit of this creature – convinced that it was their ideal prey….only to find that, firstly, there were far fewer of them in existence than had been thought and, secondly, they were buying the trade-ins.

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