Toyoca Hit

Toyoca Hit Overview

The Toyoca Hit is a family of subminiature novelty cameras introduced by the company commonly known as “Toyoca,” a contraction of “Toyohashi” (the city in which they were based at the time) and “camera.” These tiny, inexpensive cameras became extremely popular in post-war Japan and abroad, causing dozens upon dozens of models to be manufactured by a wide variety of companies. One of the most successful of these was the Hit.

The Toyoca Hit is an extremely simple camera. The fixed-focus lens also has a fixed aperture of about f/11 and is controlled by a very simple everset shutter which only remains open for as long as the shutter lever (located at 10 o’clock on the lens barrel) is held down. Composition is done through the tiny viewfinder on the top of the camera and once an exposure is made, the knob next to the viewfinder can be used to advance the 17.5mm paper-backed film with frame numbers visible through the red window on the back.

I had wanted one of these subminiatures for years and finally bought this camera for about $10 through an eBay auction. It’s in decent cosmetic condition and seems to work well although I have no film to test it with. Cameras like the Hit were made with the intention of being novelty items or ornaments so it’s unlikely that it would produce images of any real quality.