I grew up with Corgi Toys. Having emerged in the 1950s as a rival to die-cast kings Dinky, the brand was well established by the time I began to have toys bought for me. Realism was the key to Corgi’s success: their models came with plastic windows – which Dinky, at the time, did not – and would go on to feature refinments like spring suspension, opening doors, bonnets and boots, spare wheels and even ‘Trans-o-lite’ headlamps (a small prism in the back window created the illusion of the lights being lit). Dinky played catch-up all the way to the 1970s, but I always had a preference for Corgi. Dinky’s castings seemed somehow less refined, and even when coated in enamellised paint, felt different in the hand than Corgis. I also preferred Corgi’s packaging (an early indicator, perhaps, of my future career). By the early 60s, Dinky Toys came in yellow boxes with red lettering, whereas Corgi opted for a pleasant, complementary colour scheme of yellow and sky blue. To this day, I still prefer those 1960s Corgi boxes over any other style of toy packaging.
It couldn’t last, of course. The quest for realism coupled with some highly imaginative designs and a popular range of licenced character cars kept Corgi sales bouyant through the 1960s. But over in America, a new brand was ringing the changes. Mattel’s Hot Wheels, though smaller than Corgi toys, made use of innovative new ‘frictionless’ wheels, giving much faster running than had previously been possible with die-cast toys. These new wheels, coupled with plastic race tracks, enabled the tiny cars to perform stunts such as looping the loop and leaping across canyons.
Hot Wheels were huge in America and soon found their way to our shores. I never cared for them: their designs were based on muscle cars and pimped-up dragsters before pimping was even a word in the automotive world. Like Lesney’s more prosaic (and realistic) Matchbox series, the interlopers were scaled at 1:64, as opposed to the larger 1:48 scale favoured by Corgi and Dinky. Corgi’s response was immediate. Commencing in the autumn of 1969 – just in time to catch the all important Christmas market – a brand new range of 1:64 scale Corgi Toys was unveiled under the banner ‘Corgi Rockets’. Hot rods were the order of the day, although the range did feature some real road-going cars. The new toys came with the added gimmick of having a removable chassis that could be unlocked from the vehicle by using a special golden ‘tune-up’ key supplied with every model. Quite what this added in terms of play value I can’t imagine, but it was a cool gimmick for a while. The cars were intended to run on flexible plastic track, an innovation that was soon taken up by Matchbox.
By 1970, frictionless-wheeled 1:64 scale cars racing on plastic tracks was the new, must-have way of playing with toy cars. No more trundling them slowly across the living room carpet whilst vocalising unconvincing engine noises. My brother and myself were bought both Corgi Rockets and Matchbox ‘Superfast’ tracks; and whilst we enjoyed racing the tiny vehicles and watching them loop the loop, I was already feeling pangs of nostalgia for the way things used to be. Suddenly, every model in the Corgi, Dinky and Matchbox catalogues was retro-fitted with the new frictionless wheels. I knew a line had been crossed the day I was bought a Matchbox Dustcart, with ‘Superfast’ wheels. This was all wrong!
Over at Corgi HQ, things weren’t any better. Suddenly, in addition to the fast-running ‘whizzwheels’, cars began to acquire lurid paint jobs: metallic purple, bronze, dayglo pink. For me, this change, more than almost anything else, epitomised the fact that we were now living in the 1970s. By the time of Corgi’s 1971 catalogue, only two of their ‘cars about town’ still had the old-style wheels, a bubble car and a mini. They were also still sold in the old blue and yellow boxes, which had otherwise been displaced by a new era of ‘window’ boxes.
This style of packaging, which allowed you to see the model in the box before you bought it, had been introduced by Tri-Ang’s Spot-On diecast range in the mid-60s. Dinky soon adopted its own version, presenting their ‘prestige’ models on small sections of cardboard roadway, enclosed in rigid plastic casing, and around 1967, Corgi followed suit.
I didn’t go much for competition cars or dragsters – I liked my model cars sedate and realistic (although I made exceptions for the likes of Batman and Basil Brush). I liked the old, ‘real world’ colour schemes, and the old-style wheels. Corgi wheels had been changed once before, when the original unrealistic flat hubs of the 1950s were replaced with so-called ‘spun hubs’. Flat hubs went out before my time, but were still depicted on the box illustrations, and I liked the way they looked. You just couldn’t get them any more. So, in a sense, I was nostalgic for something that hadn’t even been around in my lifetime! But huge change was on the horizon.
Corgi’s marketing department were determined to push us into the glitzy, dayglo, whizzwheeled 70s whether we liked it or not. Around 1971, the company’s advertising and packaging began to feature a group of comic character heads named The Corgi Technocrats. Originally comprising ‘H.W’, a balding boffin, Whizz, a geeky specky kid and ‘Zak’, a Milk Tray Man type hunk, the three ‘Technocrats’ were soon joined by a girl, ‘Penny’ whose mission was to tell them about ‘what girls like in toys’. Hmmm: if you’d asked me that in 1971, I’d have said ‘Tiny Tears’…
I didn’t care for these characters or the new, ‘down with the kids’ Corgi that they represented. It didn’t matter very much in the long run, as 1972 was the last year in which I was bought toy cars, but if anything, the new lurid, fast-running Corgi toys probably hastened my decline in interest. The same thing was happening over at Matchbox, whose output was, by 1971, ridiculously skewed in favour of implausible hot-rods in unlikely colours. Needless to say, I hated them. Corgi Rockets, meanwhile, fell foul of a lawsuit brought by Mattel, which found in the American company’s favour. The 1:48 scale Corgis continued well into the 70s, with the company recording its largest ever profits in 1978. Parent company Mettoy then invested in an expensive project to develop a new computer system for younger users, a development which ultimately put a drain on resources and led to the company having to call in the Official Receiver in 1983. By this time, Corgi was the last man standing in the British diecast toy market, with both Dinky and Lesney (owners of Matchbox) having failed during the preceding three years.
Looking back, I’m glad to have lived through the high watermark of British diecast toy making, with all three major brands reaching a peak of quality and innovation in the mid-60s. I pity anyone who grew up with the toys of the late 70s or 80s. They were, in a word, horrible.
Unthinakably for purists like me, the original Corgi brand ended its days having been bought out by Mattel, the company who’d first stirred up the diecast market back in the mid-60s. But before the original company folded up, a Corgi Toy appeared including elements that I’d designed myself, a replica of the ‘Timesaver’ buses operated by West Midlands Travel, aimed at specialist collectors. Mattel lost ownership of the brand following a management buyout in 1995, and in 2008, Corgi was acquired by the famous Hornby group. Models continue to be produced to this day, sold online and replicating vintage editions from the 1960s. Interestingly, all the models I’ve seen feature the old blue and yellow boxes, with no sign as yet of the dreaded Technocrats. I’m not one to say I was right all along, but clearly I was not the only fan of the old, pre-whizzwheels Corgis. For anyone else who wishes to indulge in die-cast nostalgia, scans of the original Corgi catalogues can be found here: https://www.corgi-toys.net/lists/1958.html
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