The Rise and Fall of Matchbox's Toy-Car Empire
hagerty.com
hagerty.com
Sorry, I'll admit I unboxed the ones still boxed, since I think toys are meant to be out and played with, not pumped collectible investments.
(I no longer have them, though. I was selling my Concept 2 erg, in preparation for moving house, and the buyer noticed my Matchbox dream collection in a tray on the table, and remarked that her nephew/grandson would love those. She'd just given me several hundred dollars for the rowing machine, and I was moving, so I threw in the Matchbox cars.)
I think you made the right decision.
I suspect my Barbies would have preferred to be with a collector and keep all their limbs and eyes and hair. #Barbicide
I don't intend to sell my erg but I'm currently in the process of selling my Hot Wheels collection...I wonder if the buyer will notice my erg and remark how much they too love torturing themselves and would I perhaps sell it to them.
That is an obsolete unit of energy to me:
I googled it. I got the unit, European Research Group, Employee Resource Groups, and the Eastern Research Group Inc... whoever they are.
[Update]
I kept digging. Second entry under here:
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/erg
Never knew that and never heard of them before.
It’s literally referenced in the comment that poster is replying to. It would have been less work to just pay attention.
Or, some niche items can be sold on Web forums (e.g., for particular retrocomputing platforms).
I also give away stuff locally, on CraigsList and a nearby university list, and on the curb.
(But I never put an item in the "free stuff" category of CraigsList. Always list in the topical category, and don't label it as free in the metadata, even if it is. Too many aggressive flippers and mentally ill people monitoring specifically for anything free, and IME it'll tend to be a big time-waste and a questionable new home.)
The vibrancy of the color vector graphics made Space Invaders and Defender look lame by comparison.
I still have a shoebox or two full of Matchbox cars in the attic.
Also I remember that during my job education as (industrial) tool maker in East Germany our master used to rave about Matchbox cars (and specifically Matchbox, not other brands) and how surprisingly hard it is to build the precision tools needed for creating such fine detail, and how baffled he was that western companies could afford to build such production lines "just for toys" - in that sense, Matchbox was even an effective Cold War propaganda weapon ;)
So add Matchbox cars to Levi's 501s as subversive western imports. :)
I don't remember how or why we got them, but for some reason we did, once in a while. I think they should have been confiscated at the border, but apparently enough West German visitors happened to have one with them on visits, that remained undiscovered, or they were left in some of the many parcels (especially around Christmas time) sent from West to East Germany.
We would look through those thick foto-color glossy paper catalogs, looking at one unobtainable item after another. In every category, from clothes, furniture, tools, toys, to electronics. The difference in quality was several decades, the difference in variety and quantity was at least two orders of magnitude, with many items having no equivalent at all in the East.
The paper and the print quality alone were on another level, and they made that for a throwaway shopping catalog?
Just for comparison, when I turned 14 and was given some money I spent about 1100 East German Marks on a mono cassette recorder (https://ddr-hifi-technik.de/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/IMG_2...). At the same time a stereo recorder's price in West Germany was something like 99 DM. I could not afford the East German stereo variant, that would have cost 1400 East German marks. A typical salary in East Germany was around 1000 East German Marks.
Some Soviet exposure to Matchbox might well have been intentional by the West, given that we now know there was energetic and creative propaganda, including the CIA propping up an entire art movement:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/modern-art-was-cia-...
Today, spies can just robo-post on their adversaries' social media apps, to neutralize a dozen years of formative education.
In particular, they tended to roll much better than Hot Wheels.
The "axles" were some kind of fine spring steel. The matchbox cars had noticeably less drag than other brands and rolled farther and more straight. The plastic on the wheels was more flexible and smooth.
I do think that some thought went into how these things rolled. Or maybe I am mis-remembering my childhood experiences? I guess I will never find out!
The older history is different.
I was already a Matchbox fan when HotWheels were first introduced: HotWheels invented the "give it a push and it rolls a good distance" type of wheels-on-wire-axles, slick enough that they could make the HotWheels race track with the spinning rubber capstan sending the cars all the way around the track. A Matchbox's wheels would turn, but it would only roll inches if given a push.
Matchbox was getting crushed in the market. Then a year or two later (a long time when you're a kid) they introduced the Matchbox Superfast line which had the same type of wire-sprung wheels, but they still weren't as good at rolling as HotWheels.
but being a child on-the-spectrum I was pretty upset by the whole thing for another reason, because Matchbox cars were realistic reproductions of actual car models (Maserati Ghibli); HotWheels cars were imaginary fantasy cars (Green Goblin or something), and I couldn't stand them, I liked realism and my favorite way to play with them had a lot of parallel parking... but HotWheels were better.
so the end of the story is... I hit puberty
Brit here and for us Matchbox was 100% the Coke, and Hot Wheels the generic supermarket-own-brand cola. HW aspired to be Pepsi.
They came in a little box that had the two-tone artistic motif intended to be reminiscent of an actual box of traditional wooden matches.
It's hard to remember if they were all right-side steering, but the boxes were definitely made for the North American market, and naturally in the days of non-fiat currency were permanently imprinted with the purchase price in US terms which was 50c. Approximately half the size and twice the price of a pack of cigarettes. Like anything else there was no foreseeable reason that the price would be expected to increase whatsoever. A half-dollar for something like this was recognized as truly overpriced already compared to many other types of toys, but sooner or later most young boys had one or more.
In Florida most people still went back up north during the summer, except for a number of hardy retirees who actually liked the sub-tropical environment. Remember almost nobody had air conditioning yet except for banks and supermarkets. Which had big lobbies where senior citizens would congregate daily, of course banks closed at 2:00 PM and no supermarket opened before 8:00 AM or remained open much after dark. If you wanted some essentials outside those business hours your only choice was a 7-11 store, which as the name implies, was open from 7:00 AM to 11:00 PM. But on a Sunday many of those 7-11's had not yet defied tradition, and were not open for business, just like anything else.
In the local Eckerd Drugs store, they had small selection of various toys in one aisle, and had been carrying Matchbox cars obviously since before I was born. And a few of those were still on the shelf, priced at 35c. These were the unpopular oddball construction models or very unfamiliar designs that did not resemble any American cars. Apparently 35c was the price they were when it was closer to the immediate post-war period. So all the mainstream models had been picked over for years before I became a student and earned an allowance of 25c per week for various household chores. Remember back then there was only a small percent of the number of kids in the Florida "snowbird" cities compared to any ordinary US state, since most residents were over 65 years old. When they would buy a Matchbox for a grandchild the purchase was usually made up north where the grandchildren were, but when the kids came down to visit grandma in Florida they would sometimes get one. However there was a great deal of hesitation for someone born in the 19th century to pay 50c for such a small toy. Or anything else where you could detect the least bit of overpricing. A lot of them were still in shock from the pre-war devaluation of the US dollar, where their parents' generation of private ownership of gold was first outlawed, confiscated and reimbursed at a "fair" price, before the devaluation could be accomplished. This had been so painful that there was somewhat of a backlash of attitude that it could never happen again outside of another world war brewing.
Anyway, I don't think the Matchbox factory built very many different models at one time. Probably doing a large run of each new model, which would go into inventory and sell for years while the factory retooled for the next designs. So they would arrive in the stores like comic books, on a regular basis the store would get about a dozen of a new model, about half would fly off the shelf and the rest of the new ones would join the other recent models so there was always a selection of between 10 and 20 different choices, other than the few dusty old 35c items. I would imagine when a certain model sold out at Eckerd it would be restocked until factory inventory had been fully depleted. There were a number that I had wanted to buy but were sold out before I could save the money. But there was always something interesting and new on a regular basis.
I would save my money and try to purchase one per month, I didn't know the value of the dollar to begin with but I thought they were nifty. Kids who had them did feel kind of fortunate having a fancy imported toy, even if it was a small example.
A very big number of pre-teens back then had been born up north where their family had traditionally earned twice as much for generations compared to Florida, where there wasn't even 10 percent as many career opportunities, most anything else would be considered minimum wage today. Of course there were no "minimum-wage" regulations yet.
Well they just didn't value the dollar as highly as we did, and didn't take as good care of their toys by nature.
These were models worthy of display when new, but kids played with them, plowing through the sand, crashing into each other and stuff. One thing was, the paint on some chipped real easily, they could be dented and they only rolled as well as you would expect from a model descended from things originally produced mainly for sitting on a shelf decoratively.
Once there were more numerous spoiled kids who had moved down, and Matchbox got more popular, those kids were rapidly accumulating more than I had which took me years.
But I was careful only to crash a small number of mine, especially since most of them were irreplaceable and had not been available for years. Eventually they had collector cases that held a couple dozen, and I had two cases where only a handful were not in mint condition.
One day, Hotwheels came out and as the name implies all the focus had been on making them roll so much more friction-free as a more fun playable toy than the Matchboxes which just happened to have rolling wheels. A Matchbox would only roll a few feet or less but Hotwheels would go across the room, so much of the time not stopping until it did crash into something. Then they got the fast tracks for Christmas, and the whole novelty was because Matchboxes were everywhere by then, but nobody ever dreamed there could be a little car like this that was the least bit speedy. So it was a real game-changer and they flew off the shelf. I only ever added about a half-dozen Hotwheels to my carrying case which I would bring to my friends house where he had dozens of banged up Matchboxes he had been crashing along with my limited number of non-mint cars for a couple years. By that time silver US coins had then been discontinued, replaced by much less worthy metals, Matchboxes had risen to 55c but Hotwheels were over a dollar.
He would set up the tracks that covered the floor in his room, and his mom would let him keep it that way for weeks.
The next summer we did the same thing but by then we had basically outgrown them, we spent more time riding our bikes to the beach, fishing or skateboarding than playing with toys, even in the air-conditioning which had become much more common by then. People who had it were cooling to 80F (27C), it was such a luxury but quite costly for those paying the electric bill.
One day she picked up all the tracks and cars, put them in his closet with other less-utilized toys and they remodeled his room. Mine were in there somewhere and I didn't really think about it for a couple more years when I figured I should bring my cases back home even if I was not going to play with them any more, they were a pretty good collection.
Too late, she had already donated about half the closet to Goodwill, never to be seen again :(
Thanks for your write up, this part about gold is an important historical piece IMHO.
You know what I mean where most of the time is spent with your hand on the hardtop of the toy car guiding it all around with proper motor noises in accompaniment :)
You feel like you're driving a brand new 1960 Jaguar over to the brand new McDonald's when you grow up. Which just appeared not far from the old Burger King, where they already had Whoppers. McDonald's were small burgers only, for many years before the Quarter Pounder came out but at least they were only 12c each so you could have more than one.
The king sitting on top of the sign was a jolly fat guy, but the gleaming tiled golden arches seemed like the kind of thing you would see at Disneyland.
By the time the 1964 Mustang came out it was so popular there was soon a Matchbox replica.
Walt Disney himself was probably not yet dreaming about building an attraction in Florida, although maybe his secret buying of swampland was already underway.
We felt so sorry for the "poor" kids in the relatively small city of Orlando, the only true "city" without a beach, how could their parents move them there? Well, one reason was to work at NASA where there was a Moon shot going on. But the small resort town of Cocoa Beach near Cape Canaveral was not an attractive enough destination for recruiting the most advanced engineers for a multi-year project of a lifetime, when they would mostly appreciate a more metropolitan lifestyle. So Orlando it was and they soon built the Beeline Expressway straight from the suburbs to Cocoa. It was high-toll low traffic at the beginning but everybody went 100+mph so they could commute to NASA and the cops didn't give tickets for the first few years when it was basically like a private highway for NASA people to get to the Moon sooner. The Sunoco stations where you could choose your own octane well above 100 R+M/2 allowed anybody to be filled up with base stock live blended using different levels of tetraethyl lead to their satisfaction, which really made a difference with big American V8 gasoline engines as well as high performance sports cars. Some of those Sunocos even made it into the self-serve era.
One more thing is, the Matchboxes would often go "off-road" into carpeted areas by hand, up and down furniture, etc and it was not that much different than the pavement when your imagination is doing most of the effort.
With Hotwheels, the car itself performed so well you didn't need that much imagination any more, it was not zero but you were also not imagining the same type things.
And there was no similarity at all between the carpeted areas and the places where Hotwheels would really roll.
But you didn't even have to grow up that much to realize there weren't going to be any brand new Ford Mustangs like they had in 1964, especially not as affordable, by the time you were old enough to get your license.
Too late for Boomers born in the second half of the '50's, at that "early" point in the the trailing edge, the huge cohort that was only a few years ahead was abundant enough that most everything phenomenal had already been spoken for as you go along, so kids and adults only a few years older are the ones that set the stereotype of the well-off Boomers as a whole born into a more prosperous America. There's still only so much to go around, those born in 1958 or later are so far out of the spectrum that it's a whole different generation, but it's been disappearing the whole time since its peak. Actually for those who are about 66 years old now, there was not but a small a fraction of the opportunity left as there was for those born about 1953 or so. With an even more dramatic difference in their ability to come out on the other side when the Nixon Recession came along, in the way it was orchestrated.
One generation doesn't really have any advantage over another due to any vague sinister events, even when crooked dishonest "leaders" like Nixon get elected and do maximum damage. It's really just the occasional or gradual currency devaluation, whether blatant or implied.
You really don't need anything more sinister than that to get us where we are now.
I still wish I had my old Matchbox collection which is probably worth about $500 a case now, even if only due to inflation :\
And that suspension allowed them to roll much better anywhere, inclusing outside in the dirt.
Also most Matchbox and Hotwheels ended up with bent axle from use while the suspension of the Majorette [1] would usually limit the risk of bending the axle unless you were crushing it.
On first day usually the Hotwheels would roll best followed by Matchbox then Majorette on perfect surface. After tear and wear[2] it was the exact opposite horder with Hotwheels wheel dragging on the ground and wheel arches with their bent axle, Matchbox dragging mostly on the wheel arches with the axle also bent a little and the Majorette would be mostly unscathed.
Obviously YMMV it really depends if you used them on a mat/carpet, on a table or outside in the dirt and how careless you where. I still have some matchbox and hotwheels in pristine conditions because they were supercars or racing cars and I wouldn't have used them outside in the dirt.
[1] it was really a very simple design with one U shaped steel wire that would act as a spring for all 4 wheels.
[2] hotwheels axle were junk and would bend just by looking at the toy with too much intensity
As a result I inherited a lot of his toys when he grew out of them, such as his car collection (which wasn't all that huge). I bought my own ones in the early '80s and comparing them they weren't even close in quality.
The build quality of the older cars were far superior. The metal was thicker and stronger and any moving elements like the occasional opening door would last a lot longer. Sometimes you'd get a new car that could compete in a distance race down a sloped track, but in general their build quality felt very random.
There was especially one from my brother that was my favourite, I think it was a '76 Chevrolet Corvette in orange. It was extremely solid and ran very well, unfortunately at some point I tried to paint it and that damaged the axles, after which it was never the same.
This is exactly what I've noticed with a little one that loves toy cars. We often end up getting Matchbox because they're cooler and not meant to only rocket down a Hot Wheels track. Hot Wheels are too much fantasy these days, Matchbox is where it's at.
Makes you think will what you build keep the same interface or at least backwards compatibility 50 years from now? Probably not and most wouldn't blame you. But it brought us a lot of joy to take things we bought in target that day and connect them to those old sets.
My nephew ended up getting all my Hot Wheels tracks, and yes, they were forward compatible with new tracks and with all his 1:64 cars. When he was four he would stage elaborate crash scenarios on them, which he called "challenges". I would talk to him in the voice of the Homestar Runner character Stinkoman (an alternate, anime version of Strong Bad), e.g. "That was an exciting challenge! I was excited by the challenge!" Whenever he was playing with his Hot Wheels and I was around, he would exhort me to "do the challenge voice again!"
SMTP comes to mind.
But also had the glow-in-the-dark fold out Matchbox City in a suitcase.
But Matchbox really sticks out in my mind as the manufacturer of the die-cast Voltron toy that every kid wanted in the mid-1980s -- and only rich kids got; at $60 in 1985 or nearly $175 in today's dollars, that shit's steep. I did end up with the Panosh Place plastic Voltron. It was plastic, and the lions didn't combine in a show-accurate way to form Voltron, but I didn't care, it was Voltron.
These days, we have Transformers from Robosen that transform on their own and respond to voice commands -- so rich kids' Christmases are on a whole 'nother level now.
I used to have a huge collection of them. My mom amazingly kept them around, and now my kids have a huge collection to play. What a present!
It's funny how a random thing can date you so specifically, it seems like their heyday was only from 1987-1994 or so.
I still have a pencil case full of cars and its pretty much the only toy that I've managed to keep. I guess being small helped!
Tootsie Toy, which, originally, were either rough die cast or stamped metal. They were literally just hollow shells of cars with axles, in solid color. They were sold loose in a box next to the penny candy. These cars were small, 1" to 1.5" long. Tootsie Toy, later, really up'd their game. The cars were about twice as big as Matchbox/Hot Wheel.
Next were Matchbox, these were the "replicas". They had the normal sized cars, but they also had some King Sized, I was particularly fascinated by this truck and trailer pipe truck they had.
Then, there were Hot Wheels, which were mostly fantasy cars. Splittin' Image, Red Baron, the surf board truck, Jack Rabbit Special. I swear we had hundreds of feet of Hot Wheels track as a kid. And then they brought out the Sizzlers, electric, rechargeable cars. Those were a lot of fun. Also there were the Hot Wheels Heavyweight and the Chopcycles.
Oh, and I should also mention the Hot Wheel Factory. This was back when the toy companies had no compunction selling toys with open heating elements to children. Here you melted rubber-ish compound into an injection mold system where you'd place bases and wheels into the mold and squeeze molten rubbery plastic to make your own cars.
At the high end were Corgi, those were really nice. I had a very nice ambulance. The cars were hefty. But they were rare, not like Matchbox or Hot Wheels.
Trying to compete with Hot Wheels was Johnny Lightning. Known mostly for their elaborate race sets. Where Hot Wheels had things like the Super Charger (which had a pair of spinning wheels used to shoot cars out one end, very useful for loops), Johnny Lightning had a conveyor system. Kind of like a marble track, with cars.
Dinky had some really nice stuff, but they were very exotic. There was a small toy store near where I lived that had not just those, but another line that was very detailed construction equipment. It was all out of my price range as a kid, though. I was definitely wanting Dinky's Thunderbirds models.
Pah, these small reporters with their small ambitions! Scrooge McDuck didn't have a "pool of cash", he had a whole silo-sized building filled with cash, and the "pool" that he used to swim in was merely the visible surface of it: https://www.duckipedia.de/images/archive/d/d3/20230517100725...
The reason it's an important distinction is because eg the S&P500 will tend to smash gold over time as a value generative asset (because gold is not a productive, generative asset; gold holds value, the S&P500 generates value (profit/growth/etc)).
perhaps that's an artifact of gold's recent spike in price, but perhaps the SP500 is also in the middle of a giant bubble.
https://www.macrotrends.net/1437/sp500-to-gold-ratio-chart
Go ahead, cherry-pick some other dates to tell the story you want!
The S&P500 return with dividends reinvested since 1971 is $257 for every dollar invested. Gold is $8 for every dollar invested.
And that's with 1971 being the lowest gold price in 100 years and the current price being nearly the highest in 100 years.
For reference, the CPI inflation calculator puts inflation at 7.9x since 1971. So gold track inflation in the best case scenario.
Only one of those investments would also have generated thousands of dollars of income in the meantime.
Because of this:
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bic_(entreprise)
Up to this day many still say, on a daily basis, say, a "bic bleu" (blue ballpen) or "bic noir" (black ballpen).
And virtually everyone french speaking calls a refrigerator (fridge) a "frigo".
* Cornstarch is called maizena
* Adhesive bandages are called bandaid
* Instant noodles are called miojo
* Yogurt sold in small pots are called danone
* Chewing gum is called chiclete (from Chiclets)
* Photocopies are xerox
* Bouillion is knorr
* Glass plates are pyrex
* Scooters are lambretta
* Soluble cofee is nescafe
* Sunglasses are rayban
And same goes for teflon, jacuzzi, velcro, tupperware, vaseline, botox, googling, ...etc, etc
When I was a kid in Brazil everyone called all scooters Lambrettas, even though none of them were Lambrettas. They usually were... Vespas.
Now that I know it is actually rivalling companies, I wonder how sad Lambretta and Vespa companies are, with eveyrone calling their Vespa a Lambretta.
In Brazil is the name and brand of adhesive tape. In Portugal is the name and brand of condoms.
https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-funniest-differences-amon...
Rubber. Brit: pencil eraser. American: condom.
Durex. Brit: condom. Australian: sticky tape.
This is probably derived from the Sapodilla / Chicle tree, and not the little square chewing gums.
Some were so ubiquitous that I grew up not knowing some of the things we say are actually brands until I was older.
Then again, we've been calling a certain class of shoes "Adidas" since 1990s, so I shouldn't be surprised by the phenomenon. Not to mention, I don't think anyone in Poland ever used the generic term for a photocopier - we all call it "ksero" machines (from Xerox).
Equally, a Bic is not any ball pen at all, but a specific inexpensive, usually faceted kind, AFAICT.
Xerox, on the other hand, were the original inventors of the particular photocopy process.
Right, but that's still a quite large and generic product category, produced by many manufacturers and sold by many vendors - while "X-Acto" is a specific US brand of a specific US company.
> Equally, a Bic is not any ball pen at all, but a specific inexpensive, usually faceted kind, AFAICT.
Yeah, here we didn't call random ballpoint pens "Bic" - the name was used to refer to only to the specific brand of cheap and shitty orange pens that were easy to find anywhere and which no one wanted to use.
> Xerox, on the other hand, were the original inventors of the particular photocopy process.
Here it's long been a verb. You don't copy documents, you xero documents.
One of those original Matchboxes was the bright red Jaguar XKE, a car I have never fallen out of love with (and managed to re-acquire a few years ago).