Leslie Smith, 87, a Matchbox Car Creator, Dies
By MARGALIT FOX
New York Times
Published: June 4, 2005
Leslie Smith, who for several decades after World War II was the world's
largest automaker, at least in part because he made the world's smallest
autos, died on May 26 at his home in North London. Mr. Smith, a founder,
president and longtime chief executive of Matchbox Toys, was 87.
The cause was cancer, his son Andrew said.
Matchbox cars, which include everything from humble dump trucks to elegant
Rolls-Royces, were introduced in 1953 and continue to be sold worldwide.
Coveted, accumulated and passionately traded, they were a staple of
childhood in the 1950's and after. They sold for 49 cents in the baby boom
years, and now cost about a dollar.
Known for their craftsmanship and realistic detail, the cars are also
prized by collectors, with vintage models sometimes fetching thousands of
dollars. A rare Matchbox Dodge wreck truck recently sold on eBay for more
than $9,000, Charlie Mack, the editor of Matchbox USA magazine, said in a
telephone interview yesterday.
Designed to fit into a postwar-era British matchbox, the best-known
Matchbox cars measure about three inches long. Mr. Smith's company, which
began as a die-casting business, was by 1962 turning out 50 million cars a
year - more, The New York Times reported, "than all of the world's major
automobile producers combined." Matchbox Toys are now manufactured by
Mattel.
Leslie Charles Smith was born in Enfield, in Middlesex County, England, on
March 6, 1918. He left school at 14 and served with the Royal Naval
Volunteer Reserve in World War II, commanding a mine sweeper in European
and North African waters.
In the navy, Mr. Smith was reunited with Rodney Smith, a boyhood friend.
After the war, the two men, who were not related, scraped together #600 and
set up shop as die casters in the East End of London. They called their
company Lesney Products, an amalgam of their first names.
Not long after they were joined by Jack Odell, a friend of Rodney Smith.
As the story goes, Mr. Odell created Lesney's first toy, a small brass road
roller, in 1952 as a gift for his young daughter, who quickly became the
envy of her schoolmates. In 1953, when Queen Elizabeth II took the throne,
Lesney released a miniature version of her coronation coach. More than a
million were sold.
The company's earliest miniature vehicles, the first to bear the Matchbox
name, were marketed that year. Workaday affairs, they included a dump
truck, a cement mixer and a road roller. An immediate success in Britain,
the toys were introduced in the United States shortly afterward.
Lesney released its first miniature cars in the mid-1950's, starting with
an MG Midget TD, which was followed by a Vauxhall Cresta and a Ford Zodiac.
To make the cars, Lesney designers regularly visited automakers,
vintage-car museums and private collectors, photographing old and new
models from every angle, taking exhaustive measurements, even obtaining
blueprints. The result, scale models that were generally one-sixty-fourth
the size of the real thing, were palm-size automotive microcosms, with
wheels that turned and, in later years, doors, hoods and trunks that
opened.
In 1956, Lesney introduced its Models of Yesteryear line, based on
turn-of-the-century vehicles. In 1969, facing competition from Mattel's Hot
Wheels cars, the company introduced its Superfast line of toy autos.
In 1982, Lesney, then in bankruptcy, was sold to Universal Toys, which was
later acquired by Tyco Toys. Tyco merged with Mattel in 1997.
Mr. Smith's wife, the former Nancy Jackson-Moore, died in 1969. Besides his
son Andrew, of Hertfordshire, he is survived by another son, John, of
Dorset; a daughter, Karen Brouard, of Kent; a sister, Mollie Rissbrook of
Enfield; and nine grandchildren.
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