Some MTC nippers and Tsunoda pliers and their anti-counterfeiting stickers

A differently-lit photo of a different randomly-selected patch of wrist rest than the one in the video clip. — An old tool haul from a relatively unexpected source. Left to right: MTC-3 125mm Micro Diagonal Nippers with Spring, Tsunoda 125mm RP-125SC-S Long Nose PLA-iers (Resin Jaw Pliers) w/ spring, Tsunoda 120mm MR-120 Long Nose Pliers, Tsunoda 115mm MP-115 Side Cutting Pliers, and MTC-4 115mm Micro Plastic Nippers: Flat Blade.

Doing a bit of poking around, I came across some not-particularly-recent photos and video of some MTC cutters and Tsunoda pliers that I picked up at a since-shuttered multi-floor stationery/art-supply megastore in Tsuen Wan. I’d made some short recordings of the two anti-counterfeiting sticker designs: one on the cardboard backing sheet from the packaging for one of the pairs of MTC nippers and the other found stuck onto the packaging for both of the made-in-Japan models of Tsunoda (aka King aka TTC) pliers.

Here are the short video clips in question:

Turning the cardboard backing from the packaging for a pair of Tsunoda pliers this way and that to light the hologram-style anti-counterfeiting sticker from different angles.

Tsunoda’s website is easy to find but MTC is a bit of a mystery. The most likely match is a site that S. found after I sought her assistance in identifying the Kanji on the gold foil sticker shown in the video below. She figured out that it was a fusion of these two characters: 三木. Her sleuthing led her to maruyoshi-mtc.co.jp, the site of the MARUYOSHI MFG.CO.,LTD. The address given on that site is 930-1 Kasa, Miki, Hyogo, 673-0402, Japan. Miki is a city in Japan’s Hyōgo Prefecture and its name written in Japanese is… 三木.

Copying and pasting the address into Google Maps and clicking on the Street View icon gets us this image:

Partial screencap from Google Maps Street View of the MTC aka Maruyoshi address. — Partial screencap from Google Maps Street View of the MTC aka Maruyoshi address .

The Maruyoshi site is quite bare. The same info page that contains the address says the company is engaged in export and import and lists the following products: Hand Tools, Kitchen Knives, Hunting Knives, Gardening Tools, Circular Saw Blades and some of these are featured on the products page. Neither pliers nor cutters, the only sorts of MTC-branded tools I’ve seen or handled, show up anywhere on the site. Yet the logo (the letters MTC inside a rhombus) shown on the homepage is the same as the one on the MTC tools I’ve got here.

Twisting the cardboard from the blisterpack for a set of MTC nippers to light up the different overlapping designs on its gold foil anti-counterfeiting sticker.

On the chance that clean scans of the cardboard backing inserts might be useful to someone (perhaps even my future self) or of interest to curious strangers, I scanned them. First the MTC nippers (front and back arranged side-by-side) and then the Tsunodas (front and back arranged top-to-bottom):