Young Toys (Hangul: 영실업, Yeongsil-eob) is a South Korean toy manufacturer and importer that used to manufacture and distribute Famicom cartridges as well as clones from 1987 to around 1990-1991. Their Famicom business was advertised under the Pascar (Hangul: 파스칼) brand with an old, white-bearded man as the mascot.
Young Toys had a strong commercial presence in the early days. They even had commercials airing on TVs for their Pascar products.
Consoles[]
Pascar.
Three clones were released under the Pascar brand[1].
Pascar 124 (early 1989?) - Rebranded BIT System console originally manufactured by Bit Corp. It was quickly replaced by the Pascar ULT because it had issues with the power supply.
Pascar ULT (May 1989) - Famicom look-a-like except the overall body is black instead of white. Use BIT controllers, so the console was likely manufactured by them as well.
Pascar Stereo (December 1989) - Black and grey rebranded IQ-701 console by TXC with stereo headphones.
Cartridges[]
Two 2-in-1 Pascar multicarts.
Young Toys had made an unique Famicom cartridge design for the Pascar line. Most cartridges features hand drawn artwork, either generic or of a game found in the multicart. The games are selected by changing the DIP switches, with the cover indicating the combination for each game using colors (red for the upper position, or blue for the bottom). They used a 3 digits number to identify each of their cartridge. The first number goes from one to 6 and has no particular meaning. The second one goes from one to four and indicates how many games are contained in the cartridges, i.e. a 2-in-1 will read 2. The last digit is the unique identifier to separate cartridges from the same line and with an equal number of games.
Trivia[]
During November 1990, Nintendo and close Japanese publishers sued Young Toys for selling illegal copies of their games. While most of the Pascar cartridges contained games made before July 1987 (the copyright law wouldn't apply to them), Young Toys was in trouble because they had added newer games to the Pascar line like Super Mario Bros. 3. The case was settled out of court.[2]
Pascar mascot kinda looks like Bit Corp's. The PCBs are quite similar between both companies and one of BIT multicarts (ID 4602) was distributed under the Pascar brand (ID 641) in South Korea.
Young Toys eventually distributed some Super Comboy games with Hyundai. Their logo is featured on the box of Dragon Ball Z Super Butoden 3 next to Hyundai's.
