Children often love their toys for reasons we cannot grasp. How many times
have you seen a young child toss aside an expensive toy to play with a much
simpler one? Youngsters are enthralled with pieces that trigger their
imagination and encourage make-believe. Matchbox cars define this category and
have become popular collector’s items – especially among the baby boomer
generation.

The Matchbox cars, trucks and buses which first enchanted
post-War British schoolchildren, came about by accident. Leslie and Rodney
Smith, co-creators of Lesney Products, joined scores of other post-War start-up
companies as Britain rebuilt its economy and industry for peacetime. In June of
1947, expert die-caster Jack Odell joined the company and created the very first
Matchbox car when he made a small brass model of a Road Roller and put it into a
matchbox for his daughter to bring to school.

Once called
“Christmas cracker trash,” buyers were not overly enthusiastic about
the tiny vehicles they saw on the road everyday, but children loved them, and
the Matchbox line took off. A traction engine, cement mixer, tractor and
bulldozer were the first off the production line. The toys were originally
bigger, up to eight inches long, but during the 1950’s the business boomed and
the company dumped the larger toys to concentrate on the miniatures. The No. 1
Diesal Roadroller, the No. 2 Dumper and the No. 3 Cement Mixer were introduced
in 1953. New cars were added each year, but Matchbox decided that models would
only ever be numbered up to 75, and when a new model appeared, an older one was
discontinued.

Matchbox cars can be divided into three types of cars,
each characterized by different wheels. The first cars had metal wheels,
followed by the gray or black plastic wheels in the 1960s, and then the
“superfast” wheels, still used today, around 1969.

In
1982, Lesney Products went into receivership, and Matchbox Toys was sold to
Universal Toys, and then later sold to Tyco in 1991. After a rash of
unsuccessful ventures, Lesney Products declared bankrupt in 1992, the brand
names were bought, and distribution switched to companies in the United States.

Matchbox cars are still sold for under $1 and in addition to the
ever-popular die-cast cars, accessories such as gas stations and road racing
kits are made for these tiny cars. But even more popular seem to be the
miniature dirt roads built in the backyard, or the parking lot on the family
room floor. The popularity and enchantment of Matchbox cars has spread across
generations and the toys are still the miniature versions of the vehicles
children see their heroes drive everyday.

Today, 100 million Matchbox
cars are sold every year. In the 1970s, Matchbox cars began being sold in
blister packs, cardboard backs with a plastic bubble on the front. In recent
years, however, the box style packaging, or matchboxes, were re-introduced for
the collector’s market.