Founded in the United Kingdom in 1953, Matchbox has become world renowned for creating both realistic die-cast and plastic scaled models of airplanes ranging from old passenger planes to military jets. Matchbox toy planes are known for their fine detail and are popular with both young children and adult collectors, especially the MBX Sky Busters range. In spite of introducing other products over the years, they are now owned by Mattel & still known for their precise replicas of vehicles through the ages.

Another famous company who first started their die cast miniature vehicles in 1934 from the Meccano factory located in Liverpool, England. The first vehicles were made from lead and included a racing car, tractor, delivery van, truck, sports car & a tank. With the advent of WW2 they started producing a range of planes inspired by the events of the time. Dinky toy vehicles soon caught the attention of young people & the company went from strength to strength over the next three decades, but finally succumbed to intense competition & closed its doors in 1979.

Whilst we are not featuring any specific manufacturer it is worth remembering that a huge variety of tinplate toy planes ranging from passenger aircraft to fighter jets were produced in Japan & exported to all corners of the world. Some are prized for the detail & some are just plain quirky, but at the same time, highly collectible. Japanese toy tin plane manufacturers worthy of note include Bandai, Momoya Shoten, Yonezawa, Nikko Gangu Kogyo and Masuya to name but a few.

A German company who produced traditional tinplate mechanical toys since before WW1. Planes were a popular subject and their tinplate passenger planes are now highly sought after by collectors of toy aircraft. It wasn't until the 60's that they included plastic injection for making their products, this allowed them to put a lot more detail into the finished product. Whilst best known for their range of tinplate & die cast toy cars & trucks, the planes like the Pan Am in the photo deserve to be in a collection.

Mettoy Playcraft Ltd introduced the Corgi Toys range of vehicles in 1956, they were soon to become the largest manufacturer of die cast vehicles in the world. Great detail & innovations such as clear plastic windows proved to be a great hit & in the first year alone 2.75 million toy vehicles were sold. This robbed Dinky of a great deal of the market, but Corgi Toys fortunes were to temporarily held up due to a massive fire which destroyed their Swansea factory. Revival of the company was greatly helped by the James Bond Aston Martin DB5 & the 'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang' models.

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Although Airfix kits would normally be under the heading of 'hobbies' rather than toys, both adults & kids have been enjoying both the construction and finish products since 1953 when the first airplane kit was supplied to Woolworths in the UK. The 1970's were the peak years for Airfix when they were selling up to 20 million kits a year worldwide, the Messerschmitt BF109, Hawker Hurricane & Harrier 'jump jet' were amongst the most popular produced. After several financially difficult years & owners since the 80's, Hornby bought the name in 2006 and now outsources manufacturing to India.

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