Tomica Limited Vintage Variants

If you collect Hot Wheels, you are used to "variants" & "errors".  Stripe's missing, this one has PR5 wheels, paint is lighter shade of red, etc., etc.  It's frigging crazy.  Some hot wheels collectors are big on this stuff, while collectors like myself, I'd be lucky if I noticed the car was missing one of the wheels.   And I'd put it back on the peg if it was.  lol

Anywho, when a TLV collector I know from the GTPlanet brought up his TLV variants after my post on "2Models" Taxi set, I was all over it.  Why do I care all of a sudden?  You never hear about TLV variants.  Granted, there are way fewer conversations about TLVs online, but even with that considered, errors & variants don't seem to come up in discussion about TLVs at all.  Anywho, the variant GroupB brought up:

"Speaking of Nippon Kotsu taxis, here's the first (and only) TLV variation I've encountered. Initial release is on the left, with the wildly oversized roof light common to early TLV taxis. Revised release is on the right, with the light shrunken down to more realistic proportions. No other changes, although the paint colors are deeper and more vibrant on the earlier car. AFAIK this variation is undocumented."

Later, he added:

"As an aside, every TLV has a date code stamped inside one of the box flaps, and the original release said Feb. 2004, while the revised one was from March. AFAIK all other TLV's are only built in one month and that's it.

Later, I did think of 2 other variations, also from the early days. The LV-01 Cedrics and the LV-02 Crowns initially all came with black interiors but were later updated with coordinating colors."

I can't get over how awesome these variants are.  Way oversized roof sign versus adjust sign's just too cool.  :)

GroupB, as usual, thank you so much for your contribution.  I'm so glad to be able to share cool information like this with other TLV collectors!