Matchbox Toys

In 1947 on June the 19th two unrelated school friends who were reunited by chance and started a new business going by the name of “Lesney.” Leslie and Rodney Smith put there two names together to form the companies name of “Lesney”

die-cast.

In 1953 Lesney was doing very well on the market and therefore needed a distributor. The distributor was chosen, it was a small company based in London and provided financial backing for Lesney and distributed the toys all over the UK. Also in that year, Lesney registered their new trademark; “Matchbox” belonging 50% to Lesney and 50% to Moko.

The models were released on the American market a few years after and proved to be a big hit.

Jack Oddel joined the firm soon after and began to design a smaller scale range to be sold. This range eventually became the 1-75 range which started out as a few simple models including the Road Roller.

Eventually, Lesney was doing so well on the market that in 1959 they bought out Moko making “Matchbox” 100% Lesney’s.

For ten years “Matchbox” continued to do well on the market bringing out new models regularly, but in the late 1960’s disaster struck! Mattel, a large American toy company released a brand named “Hotwheels.” These were fast moving free wheeling cars and were a big hit with younger children. Lesney scrambled to make a range that would be as good as the “Hotwheels” and designers came up with a range of cars with thin axles and light plastic wheels unlike the old regular wheels with thick axles and small heavy metal or plastic wheels! This range was to become known as “Superfast” but was later renamed “Miniatures”

These cars were also great hits and introduced one of the most sought-after vehicles; The Model T Ford Van.

In 1986 after “Matchbox’s” recovery, the trade mark “Dinky” was bought out and was reissued under the name of “Dinky-Matchbox” in 1989.

In the 1980’s “Matchbox” ventured into making other products but went into receivership and was bought out by “Universal Toys.”

In 1992 Universal toys was bought out by “Tyco Toys’” which began to produce many other products alongside the die-cast ranges.

In 1997, just five years after Tyco bought “Matchbox,” it was taken over yet again by the company that almost killed off “Matchbox” altogether, the producers of “Hotwheels” and now the largest toy company in the world: Mattel!