It’s Swag Swensday! That’s when we kick down some sweet, sweet swag to Autopian Members, the cool-kids club for car people that you really should have joined already. What’s the holdup? You can get in on the fun with a Cloth Tier membership for a mere seven bucks a month (or break off $50 to cover the year, which works out to way less than five dollars a month). There’s even more fun with the Cloth, Velour, and Rich Corinthian Leather tiers. Become an Autopian Member today!
You may recall that our last Swag Swensday was devoted to Hot Wheels cars, which I have too many of. Surprise: I still have too many of them, so I’ll dispense with a fresh gang of cars today. But this time, we’ll do Matchbox models – which really may as well be Hot Wheels since Mattel owns both brands, but Mattel does a pretty good job of giving the Matchbox brand its own identity based on the selection of cars assigned to the brand, and the way they’re packaged – little boxes, specifically. Not exclusively in boxes, but there are boxes!
I’m old enough to remember scoring genuine pre-Mattel, Lesney-made Matchbox cars at the long-gone Ben Franklin store in Bristol, RI. My other go-to toys were green army men, Guillows gliders, and the occasional rubber snake, but mostly I went for the little boxed cars.
The brand had updated its cars with Superfast wheels by the time I was a customer, so I found Matchbox to be indistinguishable from Hot Wheels (which Ben Franklin also carried), but something about those boxes and the big reveal of opening the package really did it for me. They just hit different, as the kids say.
And so, I still like picking up boxed Matchbox cars if the subjects are interesting. And now I’ll enjoy sharing some with you. Autopian Members, watch your mailboxes, these Matchbox cars may be coming your way!
Not a Member? Gee whiz, get with the program. Join today!
I predate the Superfast wheels on MB cars and I remember when they came out, I thought that they were playing catchup with Mattel/Hot Wheels. Perhaps they had already been bought out by Mattel. Anyway, a bit of my youthful innocence died that day.
My brother and I being relatively normal boys, destroyed some pretty cool toys that we wish we had now. My purchases at the BF and the local family-owned “Riley’s 5 and Dime” aligned perfectly with yours except for the rubber snakes. We caught live ones. Individually wrapped penny candies were a thing back then too.
The #1 thing I miss the most about being a kid is playing with matchbox and hot wheels cars. I don’t remember having a brand preference, but I definitely know I preferred realistic cars over the more fantasy based ones. I remember getting a hot wheels city playset comprised of plastic roads and buildings and combining that with a few homemade buildings, one or two of those rugs with roads printed on them and masking tape roads and spending hours creating large cities on my bedroom floor
Somewhere along the way, during some move or other, I lost the handful of original Matchbox, Hot Wheels, and Johnny Lightning cars I still had, including a beautiful Mercedes S-Class with an opening trunk. It’s infuriating, because I have the plastic storage bin they’re supposed to be in, but they’re just… not. I keep an eye out for replacements at antique malls, and I’ve found a couple, but everyone there seems to “know what they have,” even if they really don’t. So I satisfy myself with Hot Wheels from the grocery store rack.
I loved Matchbox as a kid, and getting one in the box was especially exciting!
If I had a garage or man cave, I’d start collecting them again.
I was and am mostly Hot Wheels over Matchbox, although I have never discriminated when it’s a model I want.
About 18 months ago I realized I needed to establish some strictures for myself or else I’d come home from nearly every grocery trip with a new car. So I decreed that the new rule would be only El Caminos/other utes and Batmobiles.
Now my desk is populated with 11 El Caminos and other -aminos and 20 Batmobiles, so I think I just unequivocally have a problem.
Yeah, I’ll have to make rules for myself too. I have accumulated several grocery bags worth of Matchbox and Hot Wheels cars that sat unopened. A few days ago I spent 3 hours opening probably close to 100 packages so they’d take less room to store. That would’ve been a dream for a kid, but as an adult, it was kind of a chore. I’ll be choosier about which cars I buy. I still have a few more bags of cars to go through.
As an adult, I got into trying to collect a full set of select styles for a while and would keep them in the box. They really did take up a ton of room. But now that I have a kid who is obsessed with them, guess who gets to enjoy opening all the cars I struggled to get? But hey at least now I can enjoy them and open up some space in storage!
I was always a Matchbox kid over Hot Wheels since I appreciated realism and detail over flashy paint and cartoonish bodies, but nowadays both brands have some really great models.
I was always suspicious of box art, because it always looked better than the product the cardboard was hiding. Blister packs…you can see what you’re buying and say ‘no, it looks like crap’ and walk away.
I used exactly this analogy when writing about concept cars for the insurance company.
I 100% agree. The only retailer I’ve seen with the boxed Matchbox cars so far is Meijer. There have been so many times when I’ve looked at a Matchbox or Hot Wheels car to be excited by what model it is, only to be disappointed by the paint job. With the boxes, you can’t see what the actual car looks like.
I’d rather have painted tail lights than stripes on the side. The way the tampo is done, if there are a lot of graphics on the side, you won’t get many (or any) graphics on the front or back.
I’m sure we had a first year Hot Wheels set. It had two tracks that I think reduced into one; it had a loop and a jump bridge. I don’t remember it having the speed accelerator. For sure I had the Cougar and some of the other first year cars look familiar. I think I still have the Cougar.
The other thing we had were Mattel Sizzlers (little cars you charged with a device that looked like a gas pump.) It had a wide black banked oval track and a lap counter.
Yeah, I am pretty sure I never had anything that would accelerate the cars other than gravity or a manual push. Probably for the best, because I would have likely seen how well I could speed them up into a ramp, which seems like it would have the potential to cause problems in the house.
I remember dragging a kitchen table chair into the living room to set up the track.
There’s nothing like plastic orange tracks and fighting your younger brother over who gets the Mustang!