No hot rods or customs, but nonetheless, I feel confident that everyone in the 45 to 35 age range will enjoy looking at these scans of an old Matchbox catalog.
Cool! I want one of those 'Mercury Commuters' with the white dogs! Our family car growing up was a metallic blue '69 Mercury Montego MX with Ansen mags...'Mercury Montego MX'...say it like Ricardo Montalban...cool, eh? Our other family car was a black '61 Falcon wagon on chrome reverse that my sister and I would sit on the downed tailgate and Mom would take the long way home through town and we'd count how many times our feet 'skitched' when we hit each bump....another time....I had a Matchbox pickup with, I think, a red lion in the back under a clear topper that spun when you rolled it. They were masters of making things happen with that little tab stick off the rear tire.
Hey, The cover shot is an interesting one at best..... Features a left hand drive, perhaps a Fiat or Lancia? And the blue Iso Griffo is killer, as well! Swankey Devils C.C.
Very cool. Beautiful illustrations. I'm actually working now -- concept illustrations for a photo shoot. The Matchbox illustrations are a lot more fun. Thanks for scanning and posting those.
Damn that does bring back some memories, I still have 3 cases of the fifty car holders and 1 one hundred car holder full of cars.. I might have to break them out and relive my youth some..
as a recovering Hot Wheels addict.. this post does not help. I have two Matchbox booklets from the very early 70's still in my possession, got them at Disneyland as a kid
I must have had that catalog, it looks familiar. In 1969, I was 5 and had every Matchbox and Hot Wheel made... and one of htose HUGE 72 car cases and then, one by one, my dad ran them over when I left them in the driveway.
sweet one bob. a guy that used to work at my shop ounce said, "real hot rodders don't play with hot wheels."this coming from a guy that used to go to hot rod shows in a jetta.hot wheels kick azz!!!! -Jimmy-
When my boys were young,we would hold the "Friday Night Races". I still have all the track,starting gate,checkered flag gate...oh yea,and all the Hotwheels too! I let them pick out ANY car they wanted to race ,and we would play for hours. If on car won too many times,it was disqualified,and put away. When I have grandkids,i'll pull them out again. CAN"T WAIT!
We mostly only dreamed about having that stuff when I was a kid...although one of my siblings did have this toy I wonder how I ever got into cars, living such a deprived childhood? Oh yeah, around the time I was 9 or 10 my dad got an old Chevy and said us boys could take it apart when it quit running. That happened just a few years later.
I would spend hours looking at those catalogues as a kid. I had hundreds of Matchbox and Hotwheels cars! My friends and I would spend hours making roads in the dirt and driving our "fleet". Somehow, many of them ended up behind the wheels of dad's car.My kid can't be bothered to play with Hot Wheels when there's the more realistic video games.. I had a room full of vintage MB and HW in the early 90's and sold them to buy a real 58 Plymouth. One hobby at a time.... Todd
I have the 68 catalog and as soon as I got my first computer I hit ebay and bought all the pre 70 matchboxes that I had when I was a kid. I started to buy the neat gray wheels from the 50s and early 60s,alot of mine got crushed in the vise to make then look like they were wrecked. I payed alot more then the 25 to 50 cents they originally cost so they will be treasured forever.
I want to build a Hotrod next. My wife keeps telling me to sell my collection and get started! FUCK THAT! Hotwheels and MatchBox used to have Tanks and Army trucks,so my buddy and I would but about 30 each and play Army in the dirt. For years ,my mom would call me and tell me she dugup another tank or truck. It was funny.
I am going to sell my Hotwheels collection to finanace my projects but the Matchboxes are staying,I will be keeping my early Hotwheels but the ones I got from 91(started collecting again) to the present are the ones that are going. I have been trying to get the modern Hotwheels that look like hot rods and such but its so hard to find anything new and if you do it takes so long to find them so they are going to be gone soon.
The Jalopy Journal
