How Hot Wheels left Matchbox in the dust: A toy car tragedy

I’m too old to have had to think about Hot Wheels.
Dinky, Corgi and Matchbox were the life-blood of any kid’s play in the old days.

For fifty years, Britain made the best toy cars in the world, expertly shrinking every kind of reallife vehicle and producing them in their countless, die-cast millions. Dinky Toys were the 1930s pioneers, then in the 1950s came the pocket-money Matchbox series, followed by Corgi Toys bristling with ingenious features and movie stardust.

But who were the driving forces behind this phenomenon? And how did they keep putting the latest, most exciting cars into the palm of your hand year after year?

In this illustrated and expanded edition of Britain’s Toy Car Wars, Giles Chapman reveals the extraordinary battle to dominate Britain’s toy car industry, and the dramas and disasters that finally saw the tiny wheels come off

Did Dinky and Corgi make it over to the US? I suspect not.

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