While browsing through a junk second-hand novelty and antiques store recently, I stumbled across a series of old toy cars that looked remarkably familiar.
As I played with them making engine noises with my mouth examined them thoughtfully, I realized that I had, at one time, included each and every one of them in my huge collection of Hot Wheels and Matchbox toys that I had kept haphazardly tossed in a huge toy chest at the base of my bed lovingly cherished as a child. So how many of them did you have? How many toys in total did you have? How many do you still have? Anyone still collecting? Share! Got an amazing collection of well-loved toys? Send photos and the story to me at dearthair@hooniverse.com; I’d love to see them, and I’m sure everyone else would too!
So How Many Of These Did You Have?
About
53 responses to “So How Many Of These Did You Have?”
-
Those all appear to be the larger "Super King" 1/43 scale-ish cars. I didn't have too many of them. Most of the ones I had were standard Matchbox/Hot Wheel 1/64-ish cars. Tomicas were always my favorite. I still have a lot, although they're all worn from play and I destroyed many of them during a destructive phase I had.
-
If I had to guess, I'd estimate myself at over 200, but it's entirely conjecture. My favorites were always the Majorettes – they had a certain heft to them, they had a rudimentary suspension (maybe that's why I don't hate leaf springs, since it worked on the same principle), and they were real cars. The Matchboxes were also preferred for that same reason (I still have a Sterling 827). That probably marks me as a weird kid. Of course, most of them were heavily abused with the Hot Wheels ramp and loop, sending them all down until I had a giant pile. I'm still collecting though, it's a frequent reward to myself for grocery shopping, or some other mundane task.
I also am in serious like with that Range Rover. -
I still manage to find a use for some of my old toys. My wife doesn't always approve.
[IMG]http://i45.tinypic.com/i6jf60.jpg%5B/IMG%5D
[IMG]http://i49.tinypic.com/2lbnjwh.jpg%5B/IMG%5D
Hope this image thing works… -
I still manage to find a use for some of my old toys. My wife doesn't always approve.
[IMG]http://i45.tinypic.com/i6jf60.jpg%5B/IMG%5D
[IMG]http://i49.tinypic.com/2lbnjwh.jpg%5B/IMG%5D
Hope this image thing works…-
I can picture you making ARrrrrRRRrrrr noises as you add your toys to the display.
-
That is just so goddam cool. I love it. If I had a wife I'd torture her the same way.
-
That is just so goddam cool. I love it. If I had a wife I'd torture her the same way.
-
-
I have that same Sterling. The mid-to-late '80s was a golden age for Matchbox: AMG 500SEC, Saab 9000 Turbo, MB W124, Testarossa, etc. The quality and detail were excellent.
Majorette always did cool, quirky stuff. Did you have the Renault R5 Turbo? -
I can't stop laughing. I've got tears coming down my cheeks and my gut hurts.
-
I've got all of thos as well! 🙂 Not the R5 Turbo though. I do have an old Matchbox LeCar though.
-
I preferred Majorettes and Matchbox over Hot Wheels for realizm too. A lot of Majorettes had tow bars to tow trailers too, which was awesome in my book.
-
All my Hot Wheels and Matchboxes are long gone. However, I started with the "precision die-cast minatures" a few years ago. At $25 to $60 each for 1:43's, I only have a few. My favorite is Minichamps rendering of the Red Pig.
<img src="http://www.benoot.net/foto33.jpg"> -
I had the Range Rover ambahlance…
…and the bubble top super car looks familiar. Maybe a friend had that one…
My 4 yr old nephew now plays with my cars when he comes over to Grandma’s/Ma’s… -
I've been reviewing specifications all day, so it didn't take much to make me laugh uncontrollably in my
jail cellcubicle.
However, I probably would have laughed at that on a more action-packed day, too. -
I no longer have my Hot Wheels/Matchbox cars. If I had to guess at how many I had I would say maybe 30 at my peak. I also had Transfomers (Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, Jazz, and a few others) and a crap load of GI Joes. All of these toys were used and played with outside.
My favorite Hot Wheel or Matchbox car (I can't remember which, and it may have been neither) was a European Ford Granada. Yeah, I was weird even back then.-
European Ford Granada, like the US Merkur Scorpio?
-
-
Nice.
Where's a good source for these? -
my strangest current car owned is an off-brand (skinny wheels, black plastic chassis, but otherwise very solid build) Ford Sierra sedan, complete with opening front doors and a trailer hitch. It was part of a consolidation of someone else's collection into my own.
As proof of my Hooniversmanship (similar to Jaloptitude) is my adoration of the 1984 Hot Wheels Pontiac Fiero that I have owned for nearly as long as I can remember. I also have a strange Majorette IMSA Fiero. Good for the before & after setups.
I really would like to pick up the new Matchbox DS, but chan't help but feel weird about it's overly stiff suspension and WIDE tires. Kind of wish they would go old school with the big floaty 'suspension' of the '80s and some nice skinny even-older-school wheels. -
A large majority of my Hotwheels and Matchboxes have been separated from me for some time. They are still in the family, but down in a huge bin at my dads shop. I wonder, sometimes, if instead of working on cars, he actually plays with my toys instead. That would probably make a lot of sense, since he has yet to finish any of his "projects."
I can only haphazardly guess as to the amount, but I would say greater than 150, but less than 300. Now Micro Machines, on the other hand… -
As far as realism goes, I think Tomica did it best. Great paint, lots of opening parts…they just seemed to capture the "feel" of the real thing best. I've still got most of my "Pocket Cars," cherishing most especially my 935, Merak, Pantera GTS, and Bugatti Royale (and I've never really forgiven my childhood self for missing out on their wonderful Ferrari Boxer.)
-
Indeed! Mine had boat trailers and utility trailers that usually had a small load of sand or some such when I was playing with 'em. Majorettes seemed to be the toughest and most realistic, though there were some great Matchboxes too. Some of my favourites, offhand, were an XJ6 (with the roof and much of the rear bodyshell missing and the glass turned around, creating a bubbletop), a W201 with the driver's door from a Matchbox C126 (iirc), and a blinding green G-body Elco – all Majorettes.
Gotta get pictures when I find my camera… -
There were some Matchbox cars with trailer hitches too, but the Majorettes had a little plastic tab (usually a protrusion of the molded plastic interior piece) that would sit over the tow bar of the trailer and keep it from falling off. Matchboxes didn't have that.
-
As those of you on my facebook know, my favourite toy car still lives on as a Christmas tree ornament, still with original tires, and working steering and suspension!
http://tweetphoto.com/6127766-
Holy shit! I had the same exact car as a kid and my granddad had the real thing. Supercool.
-
Holy shit! I had the same exact car as a kid and my granddad had the real thing. Supercool. I still have some weird, wind up, chrome plated XJ120 made in Germany in storage along with the rest of my childhood Matchboxes, Corgis, and Hotwheels.
-
-
I probably had about 75 or so Matchbox cars, which, as most have already noted, were preferable to the Hot Wheels.
When my mom moved, they were given away free to kids who came to the moving sale, except for a small handful, which somehow mom knew were my favorites. (I was in college at this point, so for her to remember is pretty remarkable)
I collected the cars most would consider boring. 85 Dodge Daytona, 86 Mercury Sable station wagon, Ford chassis school bus, no racing paint, just as close to as you would see in a parking lot was what i wanted.
Picture coming soon. -
This is true. Didn't think to mention it, but it makes a difference. I really must find my camera…
-
In the US, try http://www.ewa1.com. If you aren't bothered by the exchange rates, there's an Italian site's that has a really impressive inventory http://www.carmodel.net. Ebay's pretty good too.
You may also want to check out this links page…tons of information on the individual manufacturers. http://modelcars.mbeck.ch/links.php?lang=e
I also put a mess of links on the Facebook CSRSL page. -
I've got the white Sable Wagon as well. Had two at one point. One got painted silver-blue in an attempt to create a clone of the 1990 Taurus that served to haul my gearheaded ass to and from soccer practice back in the early 90s.
-
Same here. I fondly remember the Sable (opening trunk!) and Daytona (opening hood!). I preferred realistic over brightly colored fantasy vehicles, so Hot Wheels was not near the top of my list.
-
I bet that's a Jaguar marketed under the name of "Husky Toys" in Canada. A '63 Mark 2 if I am correct. I had three of these in my collection. My favorite was a scrap metal truck (based on a Ford cabover) which lowered its bin behind the rear wheels. I also had an early '60's Thunderbird convertible where the top was plastic and snapped under the trunk for storage.
-
Opening "liftgate"…. but i'll let ya slide!
-
Ok I have a small confession. As a kid I had a bunch of these. A random assortment from various makers. Used to make towns out of the lego road squares and connect them together with slot car tracks. It wasn't until my late teens that I started collecting them. And collecting them. And collecting them to the point where it turned into an obsession. A sick, sick obsession. My buddy and I used to spend an entire saturday or sunday afternoon going from store to store looking for the newest models and Treasure Hunts when they were the big thing. We used to hang out at Walmart late at night waiting for the employees to open the shipping boxes. Yeah, obsessed. Spent alot of money on Ebay as well. I never actually counted but if I were to guess I probably had 1500-2000 at one point. They filled up about 10 large moving boxes.
I no longer collect but I still have 50 or so of my favorites of days gone by. Now I am patiently waiting for the day my kids are old enough to respect their toys so I can pickup where I left off. -
Over the years the Matchbox equivalent of hydraulic struts have worn, so I did have to use pieces of Scotch tape to hold the hood and lift gate open…. but I think that's the equivalent of duct tape for real cars, right?
<img src="http://lh3.ggpht.com/_EB3gKlxSmQA/SyAmFJDGtaI/AAAAAAAAAaM/XYjI1T0y2-M/hood%20and%20gate.jpg">-
I would have loved the hell out of both of those! I think it really is time to round up and photograph my collection… I too was big on realistic-parking-lot-style collecting.
-
WARNING: admitting to stupid childhood fact here:
When I was young, I would wrap Reynolds Wrap around a Matchbox car, to make a good impression of it, then carefully remove the car, so that I had the outline of the car.
I would do this with 2 cars, and then perform my own crash test simulations. Ahhh, the fun you can have when you grow up without a computer!
-
-
-
I had completely forgotten about that. Wow, you just brought me a whole bunch of flashbacks. Thanks so much! I'm just swimming in nostalgia here today.
-
I used to do the late-night Wal-Mart Hot Wheels stalk, right up until the point I learned that other "collectors" were bribing the stockers to hold cases aside so that the T-hunts and other desirable cars never made it to the floor. That was one of the reasons I quit the hobby.
-
I ran into the same wall over and over as well. Despite that I was still able to aquire a handful the old fashioned way. I was quite proficient at rifling through a HW display. Unless it was one of those stupid cardboard ones. Those pissed me off to no end.
-
<img src="http://www.toytractorshow.com/images/intern5488nib5.jpg" width="300" />
Ertl 1/16 International 5488 MFD tractor
<img src="http://imgs.inkfrog.com/pix/oldglasscollector/motor_1.JPG" width="300" />
Nylint Ford Ranger
Some of the best toys I had were Ertl 1:16 tractors and Nylint stamped-steel trucks. Both were extremely durable and scaled about perfectly for GI Joe tocommandeer and crash into the Cobra base repeatedlygo dune-hopping in the sand box. Most all my big Ertls were IH with one Case IH, and I think all my Nylints were Fords.
I had a good set of Ertl 1:64 tractors too, mostly red but a few green ones, a couple blue ones, some lime green Steigers, and a late Allis Chalmers (orange). They even had some implements, the most fun one was the round baler that had an opening tailgate so you could eject the green plastic bale over and over. Toward the end of my toys phase Ertl came out with 1:64 models of the '87-'91 Ford F-250 with nice rubber tires, they were fast (except the blue/silver one when hooked to its companion gooseneck cattle trailer.)
In the Matchbox/Hot Wheels category I tended to like Matchbox best for the stronger axles and cars that were more normal. Favorites included the Ford Sierra, a white RHD Ford Escort, Ford Supervan, Cadillac Allante, a rally-speced Rabbit/Golf (with black plastic, opening hood and a spare tire on the roof!)
My one regret is the demolition derby my cousin and I had with a pair of 1:16-ish plastic General Lee Chargers having head-on collisions. There wasn't much left of either car. Ahh the destructive stage. (I think the same year we blew up some GI Joes with firecrackers.)-
I swear Nylint were /all/ Ford… I had an F-150 gardening truck and an Explorer.
Wait, no, I had a Suburban too. Not all Ford.
-
-
I do still have all my well used Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars from when I was a kid and even more in mint shape bought in the last 10 years or so.
Being an only child with a mother that is a borderline hoarder, I still have ALL my toys from when I was a kid, except for the ones sold recently on e-bay. -
Yeah, as stated above I still have the cars I played with as a kid, and liked (loved) my Corgis the best. I had a standing request for them as my Christmas present. I've got a NYFD hook and ladder truck in it's original box that will blow you away, the circus trucks, and get this: two James Aston Martin DB4's. Plus the Batmobile, the original sixties T-Bird one. How you like me now?
-
Ditto, Tomicas have always been my favorite, but partly for nostalgic reasons. My family used to go to Singapore a lot when I was a kid, and that meant getting a few new Tomicas at a big department store there.
-
Good idea of converting the favorite toy car to an ornament.
I think I might use Matchbox's new Citroen DS for that use as well, to signify my respect for that car. -
Awesome. Thanks!
-
awwwwwwwwwwwww
(how many cars has your wife found in the bed?) -
This place truly keeps on getting more impressive every day. You should really be satisfied.
-
Good article with many interesting recommendations! I can’t say that I agree with everything you have suggested here, but there are a good amount of critical ideas you have emphasized that can be quite useful on gardening and related topics. Keep offering more suggestions on this topic and associated issues, as there are many out there like me who are attempting to evaluate the pluses and minuses.
![http://www.benoot.net/foto33.jpg">](http://www.benoot.net/foto33.jpg">){kind=link}
![http://lh3.ggpht.com/_EB3gKlxSmQA/SyAmFJDGtaI/AAAAAAAAAaM/XYjI1T0y2-M/hood%20and%20gate.jpg">](http://lh3.ggpht.com/_EB3gKlxSmQA/SyAmFJDGtaI/AAAAAAAAAaM/XYjI1T0y2-M/hood%20and%20gate.jpg">){kind=link}
![http://www.toytractorshow.com/images/intern5488nib5.jpg"](http://www.toytractorshow.com/images/intern5488nib5.jpg"){kind=link}
![http://imgs.inkfrog.com/pix/oldglasscollector/motor_1.JPG"](http://imgs.inkfrog.com/pix/oldglasscollector/motor_1.JPG"){kind=link}
Leave a Reply