by Nick Jones
DEDICATION
For the members of the Vintage British Diecast Forum, who encouraged me to write this book and have assisted me in the task.
CONTENTS
THE BIRTH OF LESNEY 1947–56
THE ‘1-75’ SERIES REGULAR WHEELS 1953–69
THE ‘1-75’ SERIES SUPERFAST ISSUES 1969–83
ACCESSORY PACKS, MAJOR PACKS AND THE KINGSIZE RANGE
THE MODELS OF YESTERYEAR
SERVICE STATIONS, ROADWAYS AND CATALOGUES
THE FINAL DAYS
FURTHER READING AND OTHER INFORMATION
THE BIRTH OF LESNEY 1947–56
Lesney products Ltd was registered as a company on 19 January 1947 by two former schoolmates, Leslie Smith and Rodney Smith (unrelated), who had both served in the armed forces and used their military gratuity pay to purchase a die-casting machine from Rodney’s pre-war employer, the Die Cast Machine Tools Company (DCMT). They had rented a derelict pub in Edmonton in north London called the Rifleman and set up their machinery in the saloon bar. The fledgling company was called ‘Lesney’, an amalgamation of ‘Leslie’ and ‘Rodney’, and ‘Products’, because they were not sure exactly what they would be making.
Their first order was for a diecast string-cutter, for which they had a local toolmaking company make the dies. As the toolmakers had also made themselves a copy of the dies, no further orders were forthcoming.
The Cement Mixer is usually found in green with orange or red wheels. Because it is usually found in one piece, it does not command very high prices.
Shortly afterwards, another DCMT worker, John William Odell (usually known as Jack), approached them and asked about setting up his own die-casting machine in the Rifleman. He had originally set up his ex-army die-casting machine at his council house but the council had ordered him to remove it or face eviction. This turned out to be very fortunate for all concerned because Jack was an experienced toolmaker and a natural engineer. Jack already had his first order for ten thousand ceiling hooks, so Jack became a partner in the company. Jack made the tools, Rodney did the die-casting, and Leslie did the accounts and sales.
The large-scale Road Roller. Green with red wheels is the most common colour. The very rare red, orange and tan examples can fetch high prices.
Towards Christmas 1947 new orders began to slow down, so they looked for something else to make and their attention turned to toys. They bought a Dinky Toys Aveling Barford road roller and made tools to produce a similar toy for about one-third of the price of the Dinky. The Aveling Barford became the first Lesney toy to be released. It never had a tinplate baseplate like the Dinky and the roof canopy supports were diecast, whereas on the Dinky they were wire. The Lesney Aveling Barford was an instant success, not only because it was at least as good as the Dinky but also because it was cheaper and, furthermore, it could be sold anywhere, unlike the Dinky version, which could be sold only by authorised retailers. This made it ideal for smaller toyshops and newsagents to stock.
The Crawler Tractor is often confused with an almost identical one made by Benbros that, fortunately, does have the maker’s name on the base.
It was soon followed by the Lesney portable Cement Mixer, which came about because one was spotted in use on a construction site near the Rifleman; at lunchtime they visited the site armed with a tape measure and notepad and measured up the mixer. It was made to a larger scale than the Aveling Barford but the finished model was about the same size, about 4 inches (100 mm).
Next came the Caterpillar Crawler Tractor, which went on sale in 1947–8. It was very loosely based on a Dinky Blaw Knox bulldozer but Lesney were gaining confidence in their own die-casting skills and produced a vehicle that was superior to the Dinky simply because it featured a fully detailed engine. About the time the Crawler was released, a Caterpillar Crawler Bulldozer version was also made available. Both the Tractor and the Bulldozer may be found with a separate light-brown diecast driver, but drivers are quite rare. The Bulldozer driver casting was very similar to the Prime Mover driver casting (see below).
The next toy was released in 1949: a firm favourite among toy collectors, it was the Horse-Drawn Milk Float. The Milk Float would have been a much more familiar vehicle to children than the previous toys, which were based on types confined to construction sites or road works, and so it was almost certainly a better seller. It was not only the first toy to feature hand-applied trim but also the first to be packed in its own box rather than in a retailer’s box of six.
The Caterpillar Bulldozer sometimes has a driver, but more often not. Early examples have a blade-lifting handle attached to the front axle.
Also released in 1949 was the Horse-Drawn Rag and Bone Cart; it was not such a good seller as the Milk Float and so it is much harder to find. The horse and driver were the same as used on the Milk Float but the driver was painted a light brown. The front turntable and horse shafts were also as used on the Milk Float, but there the similarity ends. The set came with seven pieces of junk: a bicycle frame, a bucket, a toilet cistern, a mangle handle, a bedstead and a tin bath, all of which were diecast and unpainted, plus a diecast wooden box that was painted brown. Like the Milk Float, the Rag and Bone Cart was packed in its own box but, despite this, many of the pieces of junk have been lost over the years and so to find a complete cart with all of its junk is extremely rare.
The Milk Float and the Rag and Bone Cart. The blue Milk Float is rare but the Rag and Bone Cart is almost impossible to find, especially in good condition.
Also released in 1949 was the Soap Box Racer, which is probably more commonly known as a go-cart, a type of vehicle made by young boys that featured four old pram wheels fixed to a plank of wood and topped off with a wooden box for the rider to sit in. Although it was a well-executed model that included a highly detailed rider, it never sold in great numbers and so it is the rarest and most sought-after of all Lesney toys today. Although production figures were not kept, a figure of 144 units produced has been recorded, but many of these may have gone back into the smelting pot, and it is estimated that fewer than twenty Soap Box Racers probably survive in collections. Consequently the Racer can command an extremely high price today.
The founders of Lesney Matchbox, Sir Jack Odell OBE and Sir Leslie Smith OBE. (Getty)
By late 1949 Lesney had outgrown the Rifleman public house and so they moved a few miles south to a vacant factory in Shacklewell Lane, Hackney. The Rifleman was demolished soon after Lesney moved out. With the 1951 Festival of Britain being planned, Lesney decided to invest some of its profits into producing a Coronation Coach to celebrate the event, but before the Coach could be put into production the Korean War broke out and a ban was placed on using zinc for toy production, so the completed but unused dies were put into storage. Also at this time it was found that zinc, when in contact with the lime in plaster, would corrode and disintegrate, and so many of their contracts for household electrical fittings were cancelled. Lesney fell on hard times and Rodney Smith decided he wanted no further involvement with the company. He was paid £8,000 for his shares and left the story.
To get around the ban on making zinc-based toys, one of Lesney’s distributors, Richard Kohnstam, trading as Moko, suggested that Lesney made a tinplate ‘Jumbo the Elephant’ similar to one that his family had been importing from Germany before the Second World War. Lesney did make the Elephant and it closely resembled the original German Jumbo made by Blomer & Schuler except that the legs were diecast instead of tinplate on the original. The lithographed design was also different and a woollen tail, bought from a local shop, was added, but the toy was very short-lived because the Korean War was going through a critical stage and the government completely banned the use of any zinc for toy production.
Meanwhile Lesne
y had endured the slump in business. They had plenty of zinc but few orders, so they tried their hand at making components for the motor industry. This went rather well simply because their competitors were unable to purchase the zinc. Then in early 1952 King George VI died and three months later the Korean War ended. This meant that the ban on zinc for toy production would soon be over and a new queen would shortly be having her coronation. The Lesney Coronation Coach was a wonderful piece of die-casting. It was the largest toy that they had ever made, measuring an amazing 15 inches in length (370 mm), but Jack Odell wanted to make a smaller version and came up with the tiny 4.5-inch-long model, which was to decorate hundreds of thousands of celebratory cakes during the Coronation.
Jumbo the Elephant, Muffin the Mule, the small Coronation Coach and the Conestoga Wagon. The small Coronation Coach sold a million pieces despite the horses having only two legs.
The large Coronation Coach was a heavy and robust piece of die-casting. The coach itself was made from Mazac (also known as Zamac), a mixture of 94 per cent zinc, 5 per cent aluminium and 1 per cent magnesium – standard stuff for Lesney. The Coach could be gold-painted, silver-plated or gold-plated, but the horses were made from slush-cast lead (where molten lead was poured into a mould and tipped out again so only a thin shell of lead remained), and for these Lesney turned to another local die-casting company, Benbros in neighbouring Walthamstow. Benbros had years of experience in the manufacture of slush-cast lead toys, and Lesney would not have lead in their factory as a pennyweight of lead could contaminate a hundredweight of Mazac, causing cracking and crumbling of castings. When the large Coronation Coach first went into production some eight hundred were made before someone realised that it contained both king and queen figures, while on the day of the Coronation the Queen would be travelling alone. So the dies had to be modified to remove the figure of the king, but the job was rushed so he was removed only from the knees upwards.
The large-scale Coronation Coach was a fairly basic die-casting but the painted detail to the horses was all hand-applied and very time-consuming.
The small Coronation Coach was just 4.5 inches long (115 mm) and this version was completely diecast in Mazac. It was usually silver-plated, but a few silver-painted models exist, and sometimes the silver has tarnished and appears to be gold. The horses were spray-painted off-white, and additional detailing was applied by hand; the horses’ blankets and the riders’ jackets were painted red, the saddles were painted gold and the riders’ hats and boots were painted black, so these were quite labour-intensive, but the completed item was remarkable. Some have ‘England’ cast on the coach but all have ‘A Moko toy by Lesney made in England’ cast along the horse drawbar. This is the first mention of ‘Moko’ on any Lesney toy and that is because Moko, a toy wholesaler, was given sole rights to market the small coach. Moko was to play a major role in the marketing of Lesney and later Matchbox toys over the years to come.
The next release was the Prime Mover and Bulldozer set, which was loosely based on an ex-military Diamond T tank transporter prime mover and trailer paired up with one of Lesney’s earlier Bulldozers. The Prime Mover was a heavy truck that was always painted orange, and the trailer is usually painted light blue but a few have been found in light brown. The Bulldozer is usually yellow with red wheels and dozer blade, but Bulldozers in all-over green or all-over orange have also been found. The Prime Mover and Bulldozer set was packaged in a substantial blue cardboard box with a lift-off lid and was very suitable as a Christmas or birthday present.
The Prime Mover set usually has a blue trailer but a few have been found with light brown trailers. Trailers with the drawbar still attached are very rare.
The BBC’s television series Watch with Mother supplied the next subject to be modelled by Lesney. It was a diecast Muffin the Mule puppet based on Muffin, the star of the show, and was financed and marketed by the toy wholesaler Moko for the BBC and manufactured by Lesney. The puppet was suspended on four strings with diecast finger rings. Although this was Lesney’s first television-related toy, and very successful, there was to be no repetition until the 1980s, when Gerry Anderson’s Thunderbirds sets were released. Sadly, Muffin came to an abrupt end when his presenter, Annette Mills, died unexpectedly and the television show was cancelled.
The Massey Harris Tractor is probably the most impressive and certainly the largest vehicle modelled by Lesney. It not only had steering but working suspension too.
The Massey Harris Farm Tractor became the first toy to be modelled since before the zinc ban, and what a wonderful toy it was, measuring 8 inches long (200 mm) and fitted with very realistic black rubber tyres. The box stated it was number 1 from the Lesney ‘Major Scale’ series.
Number 2 was planned to be the Euclid Quarry Truck but it never went into production, because the first four models of the ‘Miniatures’ or ‘1-75’ series were released at the same time as the Massey Harris and were so successful that the smaller models had to be kept in production because there was such a huge demand for them. The sole surviving Euclid, which was in the care of a Japanese collector, was sold at auction in early 2010 for more than £10,000.
In 1955 Lesney released a Conestoga Wagon, a type of horse-drawn vehicle that was very familiar from western films. It was 5 inches long, including the six horses pulling it. It was packed into a full-colour box marked as ‘No. 59’ and priced at 59 cents. The majority of them were shipped to the United States and Canada. The Conestoga was sold in the United Kingdom but it is fairly rare there.
THE ‘1-75’ SERIES REGULAR WHEELS 1953–69
The first four miniatures or ‘1-75’ series were released in 1953 and all were based on scaled-down models from the major-scale range. The story that has been related over the years was that Jack Odell’s daughter Annie was told that she was allowed to take a toy to school only if it would fit inside a regular matchbox. But the truth is that she kept bringing home spiders and creepy-crawlies inside a matchbox, so Jack offered to make her a toy to fit inside the matchbox if she would promise not bring any more spiders home. Annie agreed and Jack made her a scaled-down brass Road Roller based on the large-scale model. Annie was delighted with her new toy and proudly took it to school with her. When the other children saw it they all wanted one, so Jack scaled down the dies from the major-scale Road Roller and put it into production.
Matchbox Series Fred Bronner Corporation 1965 Trade Catalogue cover. (Vectis)
The first models appeared in the shops just before Christmas. The initial response from shopkeepers was that they looked like ‘cheap Christmas cracker trash’ and they were very slow to sell, but after Christmas they began to sell faster than anyone could have dreamt simply because they could be bought with children’s pocket money. The first four models were the Road Roller 1a, the Site Dumper 2a, the Cement Mixer 3a and the Massey Harris Tractor 4a – all construction or farm vehicles. But the next release in 1954 was a London Bus 5a, followed by the Euclid Quarry Truck 6a, Horse-Drawn Milk Float 7a and Caterpillar Tractor 8a, which would all have been more recognisable to younger children, and the range took off and never looked back.
The first three models from 1953. All were from the construction industry and would not have been familiar to younger children. The Road Roller was a scaled-down copy of the 1947 large-scale model and it can be found in three different shades of green.
In 1955 ten more models were introduced, including a Fire Engine 9a, an Esso Petrol Tanker 11a and a Daimler Ambulance 14a. The first release of the Esso Tanker was in green, then two different shades of yellow and finally red, but the green version is quite rare. Also the Prime Mover 15a was normally painted orange but the first release in yellow is very hard to find, especially in mint condition.
The second ‘enlarged’ version of the Bedford Low Loader 28b has to be the hardest casting to find. It was in production for only two years and can be found in mid- or dark green with a light brown trailer. Early versions had metal wheels, later ones grey plastic wheels
.
Ten brand-new models entered the range in 1956 and the Road Roller and London Bus were replaced by similar but slightly larger models. The range had so far been all commercial vehicles but the first motor-car proper was the MG Midget 19a. Although a Land Rover 12a had been made, it was essentially a farm vehicle. The Berkeley Cavalier Caravan 23a in metallic green and the Bedford Low Loader 27a in two-tone blue are ones to look out for as both are very rare.
British heavy lorries: (rear) Guy Pickfords Van 46b; (front left) Tate & Lyle Tanker 10c; (front right) ERF Ever Ready Batteries Flatbed Truck 20b.
In 1957 fourteen new models were released and four replacements. By this time Lesney was exporting a large number of models to Germany and to the United States, so to keep the foreign customers interested they produced some models that would be more familiar to them. The American Ford Station Wagon 31a, the Volkswagen Van 34a and the Volkswagen 1200 25b were introduced for that purpose. The Ford Zodiac 33a in dark blue is the rarest one from that year but sun-faded dark green and dark blue-green models exist and are often mistaken for the rare one.
European saloon cars (left to right): Hillman Minx 43a; Vauxhall Cresta 22b; and Volkswagen 1200 25b. The Vauxhall can be found in several different colour schemes and for the collector it is probably the most desirable model made by Lesney.
