Matchbox and their choice of subjects

What makes a British kit a Classic? What Classic kit is really British? What is the SIG all about and what goes on...from initial musings, to full on campaigning. It'll all be here, interspersed with talk of Texan Bars, Alias Smith & Jones and The Flashing Blade, Footy Cards and Bath Night, before School.

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bigfiver69
The Bug Has Well And Truly Bitten
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Joined: July 27th, 2011, 6:56 pm

Re: Matchbox and their choice of subjects

Post by bigfiver69 »

I remember being very young - 5 or so - and building my first Matchbox kit, the ME262. My older brother helped me build it. I loved the multi-coloured plastic (my mom wouldn't let me use my brother's Humbrol on it!).

Beyond just the interesting subject (A Whitworth? A Wellesley? A Heyford?) they also made a real effort at appealling up and down, from the young builder with the 1/72 scale kits, to the sophisticated builder with the 1/32 kits.

To me, they were a quintessential part of the 1970s, and wonderful. Even the armor kits were pretty amazing for their day - bases, figures, etc.
Currently on the bench: Airfix Gladiator and AModel Fury.
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reinhold
Series 3 and Beyond
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Re: Matchbox and their choice of subjects

Post by reinhold »

I asked a similar question, as what this topic is about, to Ted Taylor in 2007,

Regarding the models themselves..
How was it decided which models to bring out or not?
Ted replied something along the lines of:
Maurice was the project engineer and it was his job to come up with subjects which could be found, measured and photograped in other words he had access to, and when he had prototypes made up by their own staff they would be presented to the owners Odell and Smith and they would decide under his advice and give him the budget for. :grin:

Now just guesstimating how things could have worked back in the seventies: Odell and Smith were constantly busy making decisions about which car to put in the 1 to 75 range and similar executive decisions. I believe at some point marketing also used panels of children to understand better what they would like. They were aiming at a mass market of children's pocket money. :shock: Why would they do the decision making on the model ranges any different? Odell and Smith clearly wanted a piece of the plastic model market, were no aircraft nuts themselves and mosty likely gave Landi a lot of room to come up with ideas. The factor of what planes would be accessible to measure probably also helped to bias to exotic choices.

What surprises me is that even after Matchbox had become run by Matchbox International, there still were odd subjects coming up like the Twin Otter, Norseman and Buckeye. 8-)

Cheers,
Reinhold
Every stash becomes a collection at some point in time
http://www.matchboxkits.org
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