Favourite Toys: From the days I owned a (MATCHBOX) E-Type Jaguar

Matchbox cars of the mid 1960’s to the early 1970’s were among the most cherished of all the toys I had as a child. The cars themselves were relatively cheap to buy during this time with individual cars costing from 7d (3p) to 2/- (10p) which was on par with the cost of a British weekly comic and a chocolate bar and was within the spending power of your average child’s pocket money even if you had to save up to buy the latest car over a few weeks. I have long forgotten what the first Matchbox car was that I purchased but it would have almost certainly have been procured from the local Woolworths store where I used to live. The entire process of buying a Matchbox car at this time was a visual delight with cars stacked high in their yellow boxes with the tantalising picture of the car inside beautifully rendered on the front of each box. In most shops along with the neatly stacked row of yellow boxes was a separate glass display case that would showcase a selection of Matchbox cars out of their boxes with the vehicles doors fully opened, bonnets ajar showing the car engine detail and any other accessories clearly on show.

My favourite Matchbox cars from this time were a red E- type Jaguar (above) a white Mustang Fastback that had a small plastic lever at the side of the car from which you could position the front wheels, a red Rolls Royce Silver Shadow and a white Ford GT 40 (all pictured below) . Owning a hard to find Matchbox car like the Ford GT 40 in the 1960’s carried with it a certain gravitas and I remember a school pal offering me a stack of 12 US comics and an Action Man for my car, which I declined.

However it was in 1969 that the greatest Matchbox accessory of them all appeared, the Matchbox Motorway set which allowed you to turn all your Matchbox cars into slot cars. The Motorway operated by means of a spring that ran under the entire length of the track and silver foil stickers were provided which you applied to the bottom of any of your Matchbox cars with a plastic pin that would attach to the spring which pulled the cars around the figure of “8” track. As a motorway the cars off course went in different direction but you could also set it up like a racetrack with both lanes going in the same direction, just like with mini Scalextric. To this very day I can still vividly remember the shock and excitement at receiving a Matchbox Motorway set which was a relatively expensive purchase in 1969, as my “big” Christmas present.

Like most things from childhood my interest in Matchbox cars eventually faded from my life to be replaced by the joy, pain and expense of owning a real car. However the memories those little diecast models gave to me as a child are still as strong as ever and if I close my eyes I can still see those iconic yellow boxes neatly stacked in Woolworths and my cars whizzing around my Matchbox Motorway set on Christmas day over 50 years ago.