How Hot Wheels DESTROYED Matchbox | The Toy War Every Boy Remembers
Before It Vanished
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You were one or the other. Matchbox or Hot Wheels. You picked a side. Your best friend picked the other. And for a few years in the late 1960s, those two little cars started a war on every playground in America.
Matchbox came first. Made in London since 1953 by a company called Lesney Products. Real metal. Real weight. Realistic replicas of real cars. By 1969, Lesney was building one thousand toy cars per minute and selling in 140 countries. The word "Matchbox" had become what people called ALL small toy cars.
Then Hot Wheels arrived in 1968. Spectraflame paint. Piano wire suspension. California hot rod designs by a man from General Motors. Sixteen cars that were faster, flashier, and louder than anything Matchbox had ever made. Overnight, the playground split in half.
Matchbox fought back with the Superfast line. It wasn't enough. Lesney went bankrupt in 1982. And in 1997, Mattel — the company that made Hot Wheels — bought Matchbox. The killer bought the victim.
Were you a Hot Wheels kid or a Matchbox kid? Drop your answer below.
#hotwheels #matchbox #hotwheelsvsmatchbox #1960s #nostalgia #beforeitvanished #toycars #diecast #lesney #mattel #spectraflame #toywar
20 Comments
I only know Hot Wheels since I’m a kid.
We didn’t have Matchbox here in France.
It was hard to find, and nobody cared about that at that time.
The toys we were playing with were Big Jim, Gi Joe, Star Wars Kenner, Masters of the Universe, Saint Seiya, things like that.
And for the cars it was hot wheels, but the most famous was Majorette. Or Corgi.
I discovered Matchbox when Mattel bought it.
Got my first Hot Wheels car maybe 1969 or 1970 and it loved it. It cost about 40% more than a Matchbox car, but it looked fantastic!
Wish I still had that Ford Thunderbird but, kids being kids, it took a lot of punishment - probably in land fill in pieces by now.
I liked both brands. Once Matchbox introduced their "Superfast" types, they were fairly competitive with Hot Wheels - especially on the "gravity" tracks that both brands marketed.
I am having more than 50 matchbox cars which I had collected in my teen years. Those were smuggled then in my country.
In those days it had a high value comparing with other toys.
How Hot Wheels DESTROYED Matchbox | The Toy War Every Boy Remembers
Before It Vanished
4,401 views
You were one or the other. Matchbox or Hot Wheels. You picked a side. Your best friend picked the other. And for a few years in the late 1960s, those two little cars started a war on every playground in America.
Matchbox came first. Made in London since 1953 by a company called Lesney Products. Real metal. Real weight. Realistic replicas of real cars. By 1969, Lesney was building one thousand toy cars per minute and selling in 140 countries. The word "Matchbox" had become what people called ALL small toy cars.
Then Hot Wheels arrived in 1968. Spectraflame paint. Piano wire suspension. California hot rod designs by a man from General Motors. Sixteen cars that were faster, flashier, and louder than anything Matchbox had ever made. Overnight, the playground split in half.
Matchbox fought back with the Superfast line. It wasn't enough. Lesney went bankrupt in 1982. And in 1997, Mattel — the company that made Hot Wheels — bought Matchbox. The killer bought the victim.
Were you a Hot Wheels kid or a Matchbox kid? Drop your answer below.
#hotwheels #matchbox #hotwheelsvsmatchbox #1960s #nostalgia #beforeitvanished #toycars #diecast #lesney #mattel #spectraflame #toywar