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“Matchbox” toys is their incredibly high quality in terms of durability and the wealth of detail included in each miniature. It seems reasonable that they would sell for a few dollars each, but their price has never even risen as high as a dollar a toy. The first models in the nineteen-fifties sold for about forty cents. Today, they are priced in America at seventy-nine cents apiece—still quite a bargain.
    Detailing on “Matchbox” cars is so precise that even the tire treads are duplicated. When a specific model of automobile is being reproduced in miniature, it is compared with the original every step of the way. If the full-size auto has tires with the manufacturer’s name on them, Lesney will even put that on the model.
    With so much money sunk into designing each new car, it would seem necessary for Lesney to restrict the number of toys in the line. On the contrary, there are always seventy-five models in the “Matchbox” series, and though not every number is changed each year, a big turnover still takes place. New ambulances, dragsters, tipper trucks, pony trailers, beach buggies, and many other kinds of vehicle are brought in regularly to keep the product mix rotating for the eager shopper. In addition, Lesney puts out two lines of larger-size models: Super Kings (industrial vehicles such as tractors, bulldozers, harvesters, and building transporters) and Speed
    Kings (police cars, camping cruisers, etc.). Finally, Lesney has a special “Matchbox” assortment called “Models of Yesteryear,” which includes classic cars like the 1928 Mercedes Benz and the 1909 Thomas Flyabout.
    One season, faced with strong competition from Mattel’s Hot Wheels and other gravity-powered autos, Lesney decided to turn “Matchbox” vehicles from stationary objects to moving toys. But even though “Matchbox” soon returned to its customary format, the Hot Wheels lesson taught Lesney that it was vulnerable as long as it made only one product. Today, Lesney also makes Steer ‘N’ Go, which enables the child to “drive” a small car over various kinds of model terrain; a game called Carpow!, and a nonvehicular game, Cascade. In addition, the company also has entered the preschool toy business.
    It all began at the close of the second world war, when two buddies in the British military service decided to go into business together. They were John W. Odell, a twenty-seven-year-old engineer, and Leslie C. Smith, twenty-nine, a marketing specialist. The only assets the two had were native ability and their respective war gratuities. Pooling their service money, they opened up a pressure die-casting factory to provide various goods for industry. They set up their first plant in the bombed-out ruins of an old pub in Tottenham, North London.
    Although the new operation brought in a steady, if modest, income, the pair decided to look for a sideline business, mainly to keep the factory in full operation. In 1949, the ex-servicemen decided to manufacture a toy, a sixteen-inch State Processional Coach with a team of horses.
    Their efforts seemed doomed from the start. The Korean War had just broken out, and the supply of zinc was curtailed. An important material in die-casting, zinc was no longer permitted for use in making toys.
    But Odell and Smith continued planning. In 1952, Queen Elizabeth II was about to ascend the British throne. What could be more logical than to bring out a model of the royal coronation coach? The old sixteen-inch toy was just the thing—except that it was too big for “impulse” sales. The Lesney executives decided to reproduce it in miniature. Without sacrificing a single detail, the coach and horses were produced at a size little more than five inches long.
    In the coronation year of 1953, Britons bought over a million Lesney coaches. Flushed with their first success, Odell and Smith mapped out a scheme for manufacturing a whole line of tiny motor vehicles, each small enough to fit into a box of