The brainchild of three demobilised servicemen in the late 1940s, Matchbox toys tapped cleverly into the insatiable appetite of small boys for model vehicles small enough to be secreted in a pocket and then dramatically produced to the admiration of their peers in the school playground.
There had for some years been Dinky toys. But, well crafted though these were, they could never be concealed in a small fist and revealed at a strategic moment to dismay rival collectors. Matchbox models were, as the name promised, small enough to go into a matchbox – and a small one at that. They were also on average somewhere near half the price of their Dinky rivals, a saloon car selling for somewhere around 1s 6d.
One did not, either, have to go to the posher kind of toyshop to buy them. They were readily available at that favoured haunt of the school-child, the sweetshop, which added to their inescapable allure. The collection of as many as possible of the models in the multiplying range of Matchbox products became simply a sine qua non of the growing-up process among young schoolboys in the 1950s and 1960s.
It was Jack Odell who was the inventor and engineering brain behind the success of Lesney Products (which took its name from the other two ex-servicemen, Leslie and Rodney Smith – not related) when it was founded in a disused Tottenham public house in 1947. The company got into its stride in the early 1950s and within a few years was selling 100 million toys annually. By 1960, when it went public, Odell realised his ambition to become a millionaire by the age of 40. “I made it with a few days to spare,” he liked to recall.
John William Odell was born into a working-class family in East London in 1920. He was expelled from his council school at 13, and at 14 went to work for Simms Motor Units. From then until the outbreak of war he did a variety of jobs: driving a van, doing menial tasks in an estate agent’s, operating a cinema projector.
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As with so many boys of his era without apparent prospects, the war was the making of him. He joined the Royal Army Service Corps and then, when it was formed, the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (REME). The Army gave him a trade as a mechanic and in five years’ service in North Africa and then Italy he achieved sergeant’s rank and found himself in charge of the maintenance and repair of transport and armoured fighting vehicles.
During this time he also did a little business for himself on the side, buying spare parts for Primus stoves while on leave, and using them to repair these stoves, for a small fee, whenever they became unserviceable in the field, as they frequently did. By the end of the war he had saved £300, which, when joined with similar sums contributed by the Smiths, was to found Lesney Products.
Leslie Smith, a prewar acquaintance, had already set up in business with Rodney when he came to Odell’s notice again. Odell was at that time trying to run his own die-casting business, but his local council refused him permission to manufacture in his own premises. He joined the Smiths in their factory in the former Rifleman public house in Tottenham just in time to save their infant firm from going under.
The trio’s intention was to make die castings for the electrical and car industries. It was in the quieter moments in demand that they thought of toys. Odell’s first miniature model was a steamroller.
But success really came with a tiny state coach which came complete with a team of horses. The model had been conceived before the death of King George VI in 1952. It was launched in time for the Queen’s Coronation the following year, hastily rebranded to sport the royal livery, and became a runaway success. By subsequent Matchbox standards it was quite pricey at 2s 11d, but a million “Coronation coaches” were sold.
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It was only after this that Lesney’s directors hit on the idea of packaging their wares in the matchbox format. It was a stroke of genius, and added enormouisly to their appeal. That different kinds of vehicles could not, thereby, be in scale with each other, did not worry their avid young collectors one jot. Land Rovers, Jaguars, Mercedes-Benz sportscars, London buses, road rollers all conformed to the matchbox size. And while enjoying the huge profits from its toymaking business, Smith and Odell (Rodney eventually sold his share and emigrated to Australia) continued to supply more than a million castings a week to industry.
As the engineer it was Odell’s task to monitor developments in the car industry, updating the models frequently to make sure that details on dashboards, bonnets and wheels were correct.
By the mid1950s they were also producing a range called “Models of Yesteryear”, a beautifully crafted range, manufactured to a larger scale than the standard Matchbox. They were more likely to end up on the mantelpieces of parents than in the pockets of their children, but they proved immensely popular.
By 1966 more than 100 million models were being sold a year, a statistic which put Lesney into the Guinness Book of Records.
More than 75 per cent of Lesney Products’ output went abroad (the models were immensely popular in the US and Japan), and the company won a Queen’s Award for Export on three occasions. Odell was appointed OBE in 1969, by which time Matchbox was coming under challenge from other brands, Corgi, Bluebird and the American brands Bayco and Mattel’s Hot Wheels.
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Odell effectively retired, as joint managing director, in 1973, though remaining as deputy chairman. He came back as joint vice-chairman in 1981 for a year, at the end of which the company was acquired by Universal Toys.
Using some of the die-cast plant acquired from Matchbox, in that year Odell launched Lledo (London), its somewhat Hispanic-looking name being merely his own back to front. This eventually found a niche in a limited-edition market for vehicles carrying promotional liveries, and Odell continued as its chairman until 1999 when he finally retired.
But Matchbox toys continued to sustain their allure. A 1968 Matchbox version of the Mercedes Benz 230SL, which sold for three shillings, was sold at auction in 1999 for £4,100.
Odell was twice married and had two daughters.
Jack Odell, OBE, toymaker, was born on March 19, 1920. He died on July 7, 2007, aged 87