Vintage Matchbox Cars, Trucks and Buses

During the late 1940s, an industrial diecasting firm called Lesney Products branched into small, affordable toys modeled after the Dinky line at their factory in London. Though the outbreak of the Korean War led the British government to ban zinc for toy manufacturing, Lesney had stockpiled tons of the material and supplemented its toy business with the production of car parts until the war ended. Luckily for Lesney, zinc restrictions were lifted in time for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953, when the company unofficially launched its Matchbox line of miniature diecast vehicles with a 15 3/4-inch-long replica of Queen Elizabeth’s coronation coach. The coach came in either silver or gold, and was pulled by a team of eight white horses and four red-jacketed riders. Lesney’s coronation coach sold well, but a miniature, 4 1/2-inch version sold even better. Coincidentally, around the same time, Lesney partner Jack Odell had scaled down one of Lesney’s first toys, a road roller, for his daughter Ann, whose school only permitted children to carry toys that were small enough to fit into a matchbox. Ever the engineer, Odell made his daughter a matchbox-compliant cast-brass road roller, which he painted red and green. Naturally, all of Ann’s friends wanted one, too, and by the end of 1953, Lesney had trademarked the name Matchbox as the brand for its new line of miniature cars and trucks. The first true Matchbox toys were produced that same year: The Aveling Barford Road Roller (No. 1), the Muir Hill Site Dumper (No. 2), the Cement Mixer (No. 3), and the Massey Harris Tractor (No. 4). These were scaled-down versions of previous Lesney toys, and would become the start of the Matchbox 1-75 series. (Eventually, the company would add letters to indicate the particular model and collectors would incorporate a second number to indicate each style or color variation, resulting in labels like 22B7, which describes a 1958 Vauxhall Cresta with grey coloring.) This numbering system shifted around 1982 following Lensey’s takeover by Universal. The first Matchbox vehicles sold poorly, in part because shopkeepers could make more money off larger toys that sold for higher prices (they were loath to fill their shelves with goods that would generate less revenue). But kids loved Matchbox toys, and they were priced low enough that many children could afford to buy them with their own pocket money. The line’s slow start was soon forgotten—by 1960, Lesney was producing approximately 50-million Matchbox vehicles per year. Contemporary collectors also love these old Matchbox toys, including vehicles that predate the Matchbox label, like the orange milk wagon featuring a black horse with white fetlocks and a metal milkman riding up on top. Even though the objects were small, Odell lavished lots of attention on their details. Cars had dashboards, and their wheels looked like real wheels, not just generic discs. Headlamps were spray-painted silver—later, molded plastic would be squeezed into the interiors. Some of Odell’s most ambitious re-creations boasted more than 100 diecast parts. The next Matchbox series was called Models of Yesteryear. Launched in 1956, these nostalgic toys included a 1925 Allchin 7-NHP Tractor Engine, whose green body offset its red, spoke wheels. A traditional red London double-decker bus, patterned after one from 1911, was also released in 1956, as was a London Tramcar from 1907. A brown-bodied, white-roofed Leyland Lorry with a "W. R. Jacob" decal on its side came out the following year, and in 1958, Matchbox offered a 1929 green Le Mans Bentley race car. The Models of Yesteryear series continued until 1982. Between 1960 and 1974, silver or gold versions of 1911 Model T Fords, 1906 Rolls Royce Silver Ghosts, and 1923 Type 35 Bugattis were also sold. Matchbox Major Packs was another series from the 1950s. Slightly larger than the regular 1-75 Matchbox line, these vehicles continued Odell’s interest in heavy machinery and trucks. The inaugural pieces were a yellow Caterpillar Earth Scraper, with silver metal wheels and black plastic tires, and a Bedford Ice Cream Truck, whose light-blue cab pulled an off-white trailer advertising "Wall’s Ice Cream." This series continued until 1966. For collectors, vintage Matchbox cars in their original boxes are always more highly prized than loose ones. Another wrinkle to watch for is cars made from 1954 to 1960, whose boxes bear the phrase "A Moko Lesney Product." This refers to the business relationship between Lesney and Moko, a company Lesney partnered with to help with Matchbox’s marketing and distribution. Without a doubt, the greatest challenge to Matchbox’s dominance of the small-diecast-toy-vehicle market was the 1968 launch of Mattel’s Hot Wheels. It is generally agreed that Matchbox was slow to respond to these faster cars, waiting a full year before introducing its line of miniature Superfast Wheels. In 1970, the Major Packs were retooled as Super Kings, and a line of Speed Kings was sold from 1971 to 1978. But that was not enough. Lesney went bankrupt in 1982, after which it was run by various business enterprises from the mid-1980s through the early 1990s. Ironically, perhaps, it finally became of part of the company that had been its undoing, Mattel, in 1997.