New Matchbox book!

[JamesPerrin]

For a tenner I'll stick with it, paid more for badly written model books before now

[PaulBradley]

Oddly enough... I was thinking exactly the same. I wonder if Crowood would be interested. I'm not sure there's be enough of an audience to sustain a big book of Matchbox, but I bet we could put together "The Big Book of Classic Plastic" with sections on Airfix, Frog, Matchbox and (ducks and runs for tin hat) Revell GB, plus a section or two on the "others". I think the criteria would have to be "mainstream" ie yes to Kitmaster and Merit, no to Aeroclub and Skybirds etc. To reach a decent audience, it would have to appeal to collectors, modellers AND people who just remember seeing the boxes in Woolies... We could ask Matt Irvine who to approach at Crowood...

bestest,
M.

Good outline, Matt. I could ask Gary if SAM would be interested?

[jssel]

SWMBO pre-ordered mine on Amazon-USA. I guess August delivery.

[mattbacon]

[quote=“PaulBradley”]Good outline, Matt. I could ask Gary if SAM would be interested?[/quote]

Good idea, Paul... no harm in asking. I think we should be clear right from the start, though, that it would not feature only, or indeed predominantly aircraft. The reason I thought Crowood is that they do books on pretty much every modelling genre...

bestest,
M.

[Migrant]

Sounds like a great idea. If we can't get any interest from publishers, we could always publish our own as we did with the Maurice Landi book. (Many Lulu books end up on Amazon too.)

[JamesPerrin]

Got my copy today, in my sweaty and eager hands...and I'm hugely disappointed and extremely miffed.
The available resources re Matchbox have not been used and it feels that JC Carbonel just doesn't like Matchbox kits and never did!

As a dry history, all appears correct and some 'nuggets' of info are there, plus there is a lot of padding made up of contemporary kits reviews, roughly split 50/50 between good and bad.
No mention of Ted Taylor, nor feedback from those expert modellers who, back in the day, produced masterpieces from Matchbox kits and were then featured in a relatively successful advertising campaign.

Having read this myself over the weekend I can only say Bruce is being generous in his appraisal of the text!

Given that the author is writing in a second language you'd expect the occasional odd sentence structure, but not odd paragraph structure. In fact paragraphs seem to start and stop randomly and the order of statements is sometimes confusing. This makes the text frankly taxing to read. Broken down into an almost year-by-year appraisal of the kits released 80% of this book could have been written by anyone with a set of Matchbox catalogues and a pile of model magazines from the period - and done a much better job. There a few breakouts which deal with specifics such as source of non-MB moulds used and box styles, which provide the most useful information.

The one thing that we get from this deluge of quoted articles is that the modelling press felt almost slighted by Matchbox that they had to audacity to make kits that appealed to kids rather than serious modellers. I think a lot of MB choice of kits was also the realization that kids would only know a handful of a/c and that a lot of time would buy something " 'cos it looked cool". This lead them to produce the esoteric kits that "serious" modellers craved but produced at a price that kids could by themselves. (this is my conclusion not the book's)

Understandably there is a French centric bias to some of the information with the odd details about how the kits were selling in France and tid-bits from French employees and sellers. Though really in the age of email and the internet would it have so hard to contact other Matchbox staff in the UK. Ted Taylor is only referenced via a contemporary article he wrote. Generally though people and places are referred to without being established who there are until later in the text.

The book stops abruptly in 2007 with the death of Landi and the inaccurate description of our book and display. What is completely lacking is any sort of reflection or conclusion about what MB meant and still means. There are no personal comments or recollections by the author who is evidently a collector but gives us no reason why.

I actually know relatively little about the history of Matchbox kits but this book only furnishes you with a handful of useful facts. The Revell years a well explained, but this maybe due to an article detailing this period by Dirk Ommert. I did find one fact that was evidently wrong; the Challenger Tank did not have a display base, but the back cover shows the side of this kit's box with an illustration of the tank on a base! (I also came across a picture of the sprues on ebay which confirm this).

The book itself is very well printed, on good paper, in full colour and profusely illustrated with boxart and the odd test/display kit. Given the awful text I find it hard to recommend, at least Amazon are selling it at a good discount.

Come back Arthur Ward, all is forgiven!

2/5

[mattbacon]

...all the more reason to look into a bit of DIY!

As with so many other challenges, this thread is begging for the someone to use the phrase “How hard can it be...?”

With Lulu and others cropping up in the UK, we don’t even NEED a “publisher”...

[edited to avoid hijacking this thread]

Look here instead:

Big Book of Classic Plastic

bestest,
M.

[jssel]

Amazon-USA delivered my book today. For those on this side of the pond, there is a lotof information in it. And the box art is great.

[Chuck E]

I'd really be up to contribute to our own tribute book on Matchbox. When you think about it, we could do an ace job of it. I have a huge number of Matchbox kits in the stash and all the catalogues too.

Colour me interested . . . . in bright, primary colours.

[Lyell72planes]

Received my Matchbox book and I find it okay but not great. I felt the same way about
Arthur Wards last book on Classic Kits, okay but not great. The subject regarding models
must not inspire great books as I have several of Carbonel's, Graham's, and Ward's. My
favourite book is Hellstrom's Frog book. Lyell...

[reinhold]

Just got hold of a copy of JC's book on Matchbox kits. It looks a bit rushed and the translation "Translated from the French.." could benefit from an editors review. A few blurry pictures here and there, but in all a really colourful book. I was a bit disappointed at the lack of detailed research regarding the Shanghai Global Plastic Toy Company. Now I still need to research this topic myself.

The box type classification in logos and packaging place does contain some obvious errors in my opinion. At the same time I must admit that in the past I had shared some of the understandings, so I might have set JC on the wrong foot here. I can no longer believe that the picture of the British Commando's in 49 pieces shown as type 5 is from the 1983 to 1986 period. More likely this stems from the Revell period. I bet a good Pinot Noir on that one. And where JC talks about Type 6 that layout actually originates from Lesney around 1980. Feel free to refer to the site for the latest insights, in your next update JC, as this is all history in the making and insights will only improve. That is a benefit of the internet.

There are some real gems inside though, like the Rocket Attack playkit and the picture of Thijs Postma in his studio. I was happy to see a referral to the site and Dirk Ommert properly quoted on his work for The Revell-Matchbox Story.

JC was able for gather quite a bit of quotations. As said earlier in this topic, apparently Matchbox kits were not really JC's favourite. I am still a bit amazed how many negative reviews JC was able to get his hands on. So why did you feel the urge to write the book JC? My guess is that one way or the other you can't ignore what Matchbox meant to the modelling community.

I will get a copy of the book myself, don't get me wrong. I fully support JC in making books on modelling, and I guess he needs to make a living as well. The more books on Matchbox kits the merrier.

If someone has the audacity of creating a book that does the creators of Matchbox kits the deserved credits, I'd like to see pictures of Maurice Landi and Roy Huxley at their desks! And I may have a few kits in my stash for taking a few sharp pix here or there.

[MerlinJones]

Perhaps you're the chap who really should write THE Matchbox book?
You certainly have the right credentials.

Regards,
Bruce

[bassman]

Agree with Bruce, your site has already so much information. We as forum members can build the kits for a possible book. (There are some alrready: I am still proud to have some of my Matchbox kits on your site).
Writing a book is a lot of work but the the subject deserves it).
Henk

[reinhold]

Thanks for the credits, but I'll stick to maintaining the site.
The time I have available is nowhere near what would be required for a serious effort.
Besides it would be much better to do that project UK based as the people that have first hand knowlegde would be easier to interview.
I recall Mike had a plan kinda...

I'd be happy to support by taking pictures of missing kits and help troubleshoot the factfinding effort. But I won't be in the lead, honestly, I know my limits.

The good part: there's a few nice little additions coming up for the site. Instruction sheets for the PK-901 Flower Class Corvette, some contributions of nice naked builds, I did a Wellington myself (look mommy, no putty required), a few odd boxes here and there.. it's enough to keep me nibbling for a month or two! Oh, I'm getting a bit off topic.
Reinhold

[Dazzled]

Getting a copy from the children for Christmas. I'm under orders from Mrs. Dazzled to act surprised.