Matchbox Creator Dies
Jack Odell, a self-trained engineer whose daughter’s mischievous habit of taking spiders to school in a matchbox prompted him to make her a tiny steamroller as a substitute – an invention that led to Matchbox Toys, maker of 3 billion Lilliputian vehicles in 12,000 models – died July 7. He was 87.
The steamroller, made of brass and painted shiny red and green, satisfied Odell’s daughter, Anne, and so impressed her friends that Odell raced to meet their demand. It seemed a dandy toy: just right for a child’s hand but hard to swallow, no batteries, violence-free, quiet and costing just pennies to make.
By the next year, 1953, the steamroller and vehicles like it were rolling off a production line in a small factory that Odell and a pair of partners had set up in a former London pub.
After the steamroller came a Land Rover, a London bus, a bulldozer and a fire engine. In 1954, the 19th vehicle in the series was rolled out: a dainty MG TD roadster, the first Matchbox car. The toys quickly spread to the United States where they typically sold for 49 cents.
All the dashboard dials were in precisely the right place. Some cars had more than 100 die-cast parts, including windshield wipers and ceiling hooks.
By 1962, Odell said Matchbox was knocking out a million toy automobiles a week, more than the number of real ones made by all the world’s major automakers combined.
Photo by Matchbox Toys.
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