Corgi Toys also produced die-cast metal cars and trucks and was started in 1956 as a direct competitor to Dinky. Their factory was in Wales and the company was named after the local breed of dog found in their logo.
Diego and I were excited to find that Corgi also branched out into producing toy rocket ships, as the beautiful drawings in this French sales catalogue for their 1969 toy line evidenced.
They even had a mobile radar system and truck-based launchers. Jeez. Feels like a toy set for a young Saddam Hussein!
To top off the coolness of the Corgi brand line of space vehicles, they even made their own Hovercraft! Be pretty sweet (and a pretty penny) to track down and own one of those today!
Like Dinky, Corgi was ultimately the victim of the changing taste in toys for kids and was bought out by Mattel. But unlike Dinky, the brand was later sold and sold again and now is back operating and selling die-cast metal toys under the Corgi name.
The race for space produced a whole generation of great toys and it is fun to share these old images with Captain Diego, and with you!
Enjoy!
william
Fantastic graphics! The top image looks like it might have been drawn with colored pencils.
My husband grew up in Houston at the height of the space race. He played many hours with a Lionel missile-launching train. The missile's long gone, but our kids and all their cousins still enjoyed launching pencils from the train. I'm sure that the safety commission would never allow a design like that again.
Posted by: dutchbaby | November 19, 2010 at 11:25 AM
I expecting to see a post about Corgi dogs, boy was I wrong! :) Still a fun entry, but would be even better if Corgi had made space vehicles for dogs. *personal opinion
Posted by: Cat | November 22, 2010 at 09:07 AM