My First Car

I learnt recently of the death of Jack Odell. I must immediately admit that I had never heard of this man but when I read his story I realised I must acknowledge the influence he had on my childhood.

Jack Odell was partly responsible for the greatest of all toys..................the 'Matchbox'. And I had a bucket full of them, mainly cars, and played with them for thousands of hours. Strangely I have no recollection of having them bought for me, though I must assume I received some as Christmas or birthday presents. I think they were more likely given to me by someone who had grown out of playing with them. I kept them in a metal kitchen bin. I would tip them out onto the floor and 'drive' them to all corners of the room, and indeed all around the house. They were battered and scratched and some had various parts missing. But oh how I loved them. I had some favourites............I particularly remember the Coca Cola lorry with its carefully stacked crates. And a little brown/maroon coloured van, which has left me with some vague re-collection that it had an advert for cocoa on the side. I used to push them from the top of the stairs, the winner being the one that got closest to the bottom. On other days it was a knock-out competition - the one closest to the top being eliminated, culminating some hours later in a 'grand final'. I also remember Matchbox producing a folding cardboard race track, complete with hairpin bends and a pit lane. I would painstakingly push my cars and trucks around the circuit, sometimes for hours on end. I have no idea what force actually determined the winner, it was probably quite simply whichever one I felt worthy of the trophy on the day! It was fantastic witnessing the snazzy sports car being out manoeuvred on the final bend by the excavator. It was to be my own version of Wacky Races. I don't know exactly what happened to them nor the bucket. I did pass them down to my nephew and I seem to remember they were often buried in the back garden and dug up again a few days later. I would love to have them now, not that they would have any particular value given the condition they were in.

Jack Odell was 87 when he died. He was an engineer by trade who, after World War Two, joined a business owned by Leslie Smith and Rodney Smith. The company was called Lesney Products ( taking the first three letters of one of the Smiths' christian names and the second three from the other) and they made parts for real cars. In 1952, Odell made a red and green steam roller for his daughter. She wanted to take it to school but to do so it had to be small enough to fit into a matchbox. Her schoolfriends thought the toy was marvellous and soon Odell was knocking out more steam rollers. Lesney thereby decided to market these finely detailed toys, and soon added a Land Rover, London bus ( I had one of them), bulldozer and a fire engine (had one of them too). In 1954 Matchbox produced their first car - the MG TD Roadster. By 1962 they were making a million cars a week. They were affordable to buy and kids collected them with great passion and enthusiasm. They were popular all around the world and there was never any let up in the attention to detail in order to get as close to the real thing as possible.Lesney eventually hit bad times and went into receivership in 1982. The Matchbox brand has continued since, albeit it the hands of various other companies.