Kabaya

Kabaya Foods Corporation (カバヤ食品, Kabaya Syokuhin) is a Japanese confectionery company. In business at least since the 1960s, they are well known for producing candy and small toys packaged with their candy known as Candy Toys. A lot of toys, with boy-oriented products alone ranging from plastic dinosaur kits to a broad variety of LEGO properties to Transformers toys and model kits.

Generation One Kabaya products
Kabaya's relationship with the Transformers brand began in 1985 when they produced their first Transformers model kits. These model kits continued to be produced until 1989 with Transformers Victory and then resumed production with Beast Wars in 1998. Kabaya has gradually phased out their Transformers model kits in recent years, opting for small, less complex toys instead, such as Blockformers and Change Micron.

Generation One Kabaya model kits came in two sizes: Transformers Chocolate and Transformers Gum. Transformers Chocolate (named so because they came with chocolate) were much smaller and less complex than the Transformers Gum kits. They came gang-molded in a single color, though each kit came in several different colors. Despite their small size, most were able to completely transform from robot to alt mode. In size and complexity, they are comparable to WST Transformers. Approximately 100 different types of Transformers Chocolate model kits were produced for Generation One.

Transformers Gum kits are those kits that most fans typically associate with Kabaya. The main line of Generation One Transformers Gum kits are gang-molded in 3 colors, and are generally about 4 inches tall, much larger than the Transformers Chocolate kits, but still generally smaller than the toys. Like the Chocolate kits, most of these kits had full transformations. Additionally, these kits often preserved the gimmicks of the toys, including Headmaster partners and working stats bars, Powermaster Partners, and full combination ability for combiner teams. About 50 different types of Transformers Gum model kits were produced for Generation One.

A second kind of Transformers Gum kit was also made, gang-molded in a single color like the Chocolate kits and smaller than the Transformers Gum kits, but larger than the Chocolate kits. Unlike the larger Transformers Gum kits and the Chocolate kits, which were produced through Victory, these smaller Gum kits were phased out during Headmasters.

Another variation on the Transformers Gum and Transformers Chocolate kits were a small line of Superdeformed model kits called PD Transformers. They came in both the larger Gum and Chocolate sizes, and did not transform.

In addition to the Transformers Gum and Transformers Chocolate kits that they are best known for, Kabaya also created non-transforming Decoy-style figures usually released as part of their Transformers Caramel and Transformers Ramune line.