Category:Dinky Toys

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Always Choose Dinky Toys (MM 1960-09).jpg

Dinky Toys

1934 -     


1934: Full-page advert for the early range (Meccano Magazine). Note the lead-cast first-issue staple-top delivery vans, top right.

1934: Full-page advert for the early range (Meccano Magazine). Note the lead-cast first-issue staple-top delivery vans, top right. [image info]

Dinky Toys - A Fascinating Collecting Hobby (1939)

Dinky Toys - A Fascinating Collecting Hobby (1939) [image info]

Meccano Ltd.'s Dinky Toys brand of diecast toys was launched in 1934, as a successor to the slightly more experimental lead-cast Hornby Modelled Miniatures range.

Most of the Museum's Dinky items are in the dedicated Dinky Toys cabinet in Arch Two, .

Dinky and scale

The new range of Dinky Toys were mostly vehicles - a mix of cast waterline-model ships, cars and vans, and aeroplanes, with the road vehicles mostly produced to a nominal 1:43 scale in order to be compatible with Hornby's large gauge 0 model railways. This use of cross-brand compatibility had appeared before when the company's first examples of Hornby Trains and accessories were produced with Meccano nuts and bolts, and and with Meccano spacings and sizes, as a way of emphasising that the new brand was a continuation of a previous successful product range. Once owners had a Hornby Series train layout, with trackside accessories including buildings, people, and street furniture, the next step was road vehicles, and once they'd bought a couple of Dinky cars as layout "garnish", they'd have the beginnings of what might turn into a new collecting hobby.

Not all of the new post-1934 pieces were to the same scale: for instance, the Dinky Double decker buses. if produced to 1:43, would have been much larger than and also too expensive for most of the potential buyers of a little toy bus, so while 1:43 was the norm for any wheeled Dinky Toy that didn't explicitly state a different scale (such as the 1:1800-scale ship models), there were a number of quiet but definite exceptions to the rule.

Smaller 1:48 scale was used for some larger models, such as the large lorries and industrial vehicles that later formed the basis of the Dinky Supertoys range.

By this time, compatibility with 0-gauge model railways was becoming less of an issue, and Dinky experimented with smaller 1:76 scale models to go with the newer half-sized-track 00-gauge "Hornby Dublo" railway sets, although this "Dublo Dinky" range was short-lived.

Some models with the fractionally larger 1:42 scale started to appear in the range after Meccano Ltd.'s takeover by Lines Bros., who had produced their own Spot-On range of diecast model cars, in 1:42 scale.

External links

The main association for people interested in Dinky Toys is the Dinky Toy Collectors' Association (DTCA).

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