The Toyota Land Cruiser Heritage Museum located in Salt Lake City, Utah USA, looks like a Land Cruiser fan’s dream.
But who knew it was also a Land Cruiser toy collector’s dream, including a superb collection of rare radio controlled Land Cruiser toys?
While recently shopping for a new car, I spent a lot of time on YouTube watching car review videos. Being a fan of Toyota and Lexus, I inevitably found myself enjoying many videos by a YouTuber by the name of Kirk Kreifels, who has a particular love of reviewing these brands, as well as all the other legendary Japanese car manufacturers.
But imagine my surprise when, in one video, Kirk took a trip to a dedicated Toyota Land Cruiser Museum (which I hadn’t been aware even existed). And in addition to filming a huge warehouse filled with vintage Land Cruisers, he captured some footage of an amazing display case at the museum, full of Land Cruiser toys and memorabilia…
For once this wasn’t just a collection of die-cast models only. Instead – it’s a bit of everything, including both kit-based R/C model ready-to-run. Marui, Nikko, Joustra, Matsushiro and many more R/C models can be seen.
It’s an amazing selection of vintage R/C, full of rare pieces that I’ve tried to collect over the past 30 years – albeit with a lot less success than the collectors who have put this lovely museum together.
The Museum’s official website even has a comprehensive gallery of the models, individually photographed. Which alone, impressed me as I feel like you rarely see that kind of effort made on private websites these days. It’s nice to see the content wasn’t just dumped on Instagram (which, like all Facebook sites, constantly harasses visitors to join then doesn’t even let you save images 🙄).
According to the Museum’s website:
Private collectors and Land Cruiser enthusiasts have loaned the Museum vehicles, vintage owner’s manuals, over 1000 scale models, tool kits, marketing materials, memorabilia and artwork, all of which are on display.
I wonder which collectors might have loaned the R/C models, let alone all the kits and die-cast models…
I am really happy to see rare R/C models like The Winch, by Matsushiro and the Joustra Toyota Land Cruiser were featured. It all just makes for a really interesting and varied toy showcase, acknowledging many of the best toys ever made.
And of course, there are the bigger classic R/C kits too – check out the Marui treasures at the bottom of this next image, such as the Marui Super Wheelie Toyota Land Cruiser…
I still have more vintage Toyota Land Cruiser R/C models to write about, but I hope you enjoy this museum collection. Below, I’ve edited Kirk’s footage down to the 1min clip of the toy display case (I’ve saved it below just in case the original YouTube video ever disappears). Check it out here:
To see the entire original video on Kirk’s channel, please visit here. And here’s the link to the Museum’s website: https://landcruiserhm.com/ (Their full gallery of toys can be found here)
As always, happy collecting 🙂