As early as December 1947, the trade journal ‘British Plastics’ described the plastics industry as ‘overwhelmed by the widespread acceptance of plastics by the toy industry.’ This was partly because of the continuing shortages of metal for toy production and partly because of the huge pent-up demand for new toys after the Second World War, which meant that almost anything would sell.
As a result, numerous manufacturers quickly became involved in the production of plastic toys, including cars. Some were already in the plastics business and started applying their expertise to toys as a means of expanding their product line; others had many years of experience of making toys from traditional materials like tinplate, and changed to plastics as a way of economising on production costs or overcoming metal shortages.

Palitoy
Among the earliest post-war toy vehicles were a group of four, advertised to the toy trade in 1948 by Cascelloid of Leicester, who made dolls under the trademark Palitoy. The company was formed in 1911 by Mr. A. E. Pallett. Palitoy’s bus, van, saloon car and coupé were available either with free-rolling wheels or with a clockwork motor inside. The van and bus are simple, generic designs, but the saloon is recognisably a Jaguar – possibly copied from a contemporary Crescent diecast – while the coupé is an American Ford. What they lack in realism, they more than make up for in charm, particularly when found with their original boxes, which are designed to look like a garage lock-up. The delivery van can be found with various paper stickers, while a variation has been seen with a single battery-operated headlight sticking out of the radiator. Pressure on the bonnet causes contact to be made and the bulb lights up. Another Cascelloid toy, based on the same principle, was a toy dog whose nose lit up when its tail was pushed in!
Three other Palitoy cars, dating from 1950–51, are of interest to collectors, as they are based on real prototypes which the diecast manufacturers of the time largely overlooked. The Triumph Mayflower and the Sunbeam Talbot were both clockwork-powered, whereas the larger Austin A70 Hampshire had a battery-driven motor. This was marketed by the Ever Ready company, for it was obviously a good move for a battery maker to encourage sales of battery toys!

Beeju
Another company that quickly saw the potential of plastic in toy car production was EVB Plastics of Salfords, Surrey. Using the tradename ‘Beeju’, EVB advertised a simple plastic fire engine as early as 1948, to be followed by an extensive series of lorries, retailing at only
1/- (5p) each. Most of these had a common chassis but the series also included a Daimler ambulance.
Also dating from this period is a delightful set of four simple racing cars, packed in a yellow box marked ‘Service Garage’ which could open out into a petrol station. Beeju had aspirations beyond the UK market, too. In 1949, a 4.5 inch clockwork-powered American car was advertised to the toy trade, available in coupé, saloon and cabriolet versions. The text of the advertisement is in French, Spanish and English, suggesting that Beeju had these export markets in mind.

Victory
Many of these plastic toys are attractive novelties, but only a few could claim to be scale models. The 1/20 scale electrically-powered cars produced by Victory Industries are in a different league. This is one of the few plastic toy companies whose history has been researched extensively, and enthusiast Malcolm Parker has published his findings on a website. Victory had discovered another big advantage of plastic: as it was light it could be used for larger-scale battery-powered cars, as there was less strain on the motor. With larger scales came greater realism, amply demonstrated by Victory’s model of the 1949 Morris Minor.
The Minor was followed by other British cars of the period – Vauxhall Velox, Austin A40, MGTF, Hillman Minx, Standard Ten, Triumph TR2/3, MGA and so on. From 1957 onwards, though, the company concentrated on its VIP Electric Model Roadway system. What was particularly noteworthy about the Victory cars was that they were made by arrangement with the real manufacturers and used in showrooms as promotional models – perhaps the first British example of a practice that was widespread in the USA.

Mettoy
The USA influenced the British plastic toy industry in other ways, too. One of the big American companies, the Ideal Toy Corporation, made an arrangement with O and M Kleeman Limited which allowed some of Ideal’s plastic toys to be sold in the UK. These were often quite elaborate, coming with numerous accessories to enhance play value. The Decorator’s Truck, for example, carried a load of small paint pots, a paint brush and a miniature ladder. In 1948, Henry Ullman, son of the founder of the Mettoy company which had been making tin toys since the 1930s, visited the US and returned with the idea of producing toys in plastic. Mettoy had made some Dinky Toy-sized cars such as a Standard Vanguard, the mould of which was converted for use with plastic, and a new series of plastic trucks with an Austin cab was launched. Larger-sized models followed, some with friction mechanisms and other more elaborate ones with electric motors or lighting, the Jaguar 2.4 being the summit of Mettoy’s achievement in this field. This featured a robust moulded bodyshell with fittings such as the radiator grille and bumpers being added in diecast metal. The distinctive Jaguar bonnet mascot wasn’t forgotten either.

Timpo
While not as big a player in the post-war toy market as Mettoy, Timpo also deserves a mention here. The name simply stands for Toy Importers Limited, founded in 1938 by Mr Sally Gawrylowicz. Very soon afterwards, war conditions made toy importation impossible and Timpo started making its own toys – managing to continue during the war by developing a composition material as a substitute for metal. After the war, Timpo was quick to introduce diecast metal cars and trucks, though they were very crudely made. Timpo next turned to plastic, making some friction-driven trucks under the Elmont name. While these were little more than a minor footnote in model car history, Timpo nevertheless went on to develop its plastic moulding skills and successfully continued making soldiers and cowboy figures until 1979.

Wells-Brimtoy
Like Mettoy, Wells-Brimtoy had a long track record of producing tinplate toy cars. The company was formed in 1932, when British Metal and Toy Manufacturers (founded in 1914) was taken over by A. Wells and Co. (founded in 1919). Wells-Brimtoy launched its ‘Pocketoy’ series in 1952, combining the latest plastic moulding methods with traditional lithographed tinplate. Most of this series consisted of simple Bedford trucks with very colourful bodies but there were a few plastic cars dating from 1951, notably the Morris Minor. The Brimtoy is of interest to collectors as it, along with the much more expensive version by Victory, is one of very few replicas of the early split-screen Minor.
Brimtoy obviously maintained a close connection with the Vauxhall-Bedford company, as most of its trucks were based on Bedfords. In addition to the small (3.5 inch) Pocketoys, other larger Bedfords were made, still incorporating a good deal of tinplate, often with lethally sharp edges which would probably have them banned as children’s toys today for safety reasons!
If Mettoy’s Jaguar was its pièce de résistance, Brimtoy’s equivalent was the Vauxhall Cresta, with its very realistic moulded body and remote-control battery box. This was featured as a Christmas gift suggestion in Vauxhall Motorist, Vauxhall’s in-house magazine, in December 1957.
Tri-ang Minic
However, one British toy company made more plastic toy cars than all the others put together: Tri-ang, which, along with Meccano Limited, dominated the UK toy market for decades. The company’s origins go back to the 1870s when the Lines family began producing wooden toys and rocking horses. After the First World War, three of Joseph Lines’ sons decided to set up on their own, coming up with the Tri-ang name as three lines form a triangle. After the Second World War, Tri-ang developed into a toy empire, with several factories in England and Wales, soon followed by factories as far afield as Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.
Tri-ang was quick to see the potential of plastic for toy production, especially for model aircraft. As early as 1947, the Penguin series of plastic cars appeared, powered – fittingly for these austere times – not by an electric or clockwork motor but by a simple elastic band. The first was a Maserati racing car, which drew considerable attention in the pages of British Plastics in November 1947. “The whole body is moulded in cellulose acetate in one piece and is designed to accommodate the metal chassis on which is mounted the operating mechanism. Up to six bodies are moulded per shot, and strong but light models can be manufactured in a variety of colours. The first of this series is the Penguin racing car, based on the Maserati racer. The popularity of this model is shown by the fact that over a million of them have already been sold.” Others followed, sought after today as they are based on unusual subjects: an American Ford, an Armstrong Siddeley Hurricane and a Jowett Javelin.
Beside these, Tri-ang’s traditional toy car line – the tinplate Minic series – looked old-fashioned. Gradually, the old Minics were superseded by new models with plastic bodies – though to avoid any negative reactions from buyers the word ‘plastic’ was never used in catalogues, which referred to ‘moulded bodies’ instead. Designated ‘Minic Series II’, these were more sophisticated than the rather basic Penguins. The mainstay of the range was a car described simply as the ‘No.2 saloon’, though it was probably based on a 1949 Buick, designed to appeal to the American export market.
While Tri-ang was pioneering plastic in toy car production, a much smaller company, Rovex, was founded by Alexander Gregory Vanetzian in 1946. Rovex secured a contract to supply plastic toys to Marks and Spencer and these included a few small cars about three inches in length, yet powered by a compact clockwork motor. Marks and Spencer also commissioned a plastic battery-driven train set. Seeing the potential of this product, Lines Brothers took over the firm in 1951 and developed Tri-ang Railways which soon gave serious competition to Meccano Limited’s long-established Hornby Dublo series. In 1954, Rovex moved to a new factory in Margate.
Having expanded its plastic manufacturing facilities, Tri-ang next launched a cheaper series of toys, the Minic ‘Push and Go’ series. The best of these were friction-powered cars around four inches in length, based on popular cars of the period like the Morris Oxford, Austin A40 Devon, Hillman Minx and Standard Vanguard. Many others were commercial vehicles with a simple non-prototypical cab design and fitted with many different loads – timber, coal, cement, container lorry and so on. The range grew quickly in so many different scales that Tri-ang made an attempt to rationalise it in its 1961 catalogue by dividing it into the Major, Minor and Minimus series. The Major models were between 5½ and 7½ inches long and, perhaps because of their larger size, were often moulded in two halves, leaving a join down the middle. The small Minimus models were a little bigger than the Lesney Matchbox series, and the bodyshells often had solid windows to conceal the friction motor inside. Most ‘Push and Go’ toys are not very realistic, but some are sought after as they are based on interesting subjects. No M219 in the Major series, for instance, is a model of a Ford 100E Escort estate car, while the smaller range included a Bentley Continental Coupé, a Morris Minibus and a Standard Vanguard Vignale Estate Car, none of which was available in diecast form.
Meanwhile, at the top end of the toy car market, Tri-ang offered a series of 1/20 scale electric cars, which took further the earlier Victory concept. Tri-ang’s move into this field effectively killed off any remaining demand for the Victory series and led that company to focus instead on developing the ‘VIP’ electric roadway system. The Tri-ang range included many desirable vehicles like the Austin Healey 100, MGA, Triumph Herald Coupé and the Bentley Continental convertible.
The standard of the Minic 1/20 series was never surpassed as several factors led British toy companies to develop in other directions. The main one was that Hong Kong companies were able to produce battery-operated toy cars far more cheaply, and as a result, UK toy manufacturers began to take more interest in developing slot car racing systems which were much more fun to play with – not only the hugely successful Scalextric range but others like Minic Motorways, Airfix and Champion.
The last significant plastic range made by Tri-ang was the Minix series of 1/76 scale cars, launched in 1965. Designed to accompany Tri-ang railways, the Minix range included many of the cars familiar on British roads in the late 1960s: Ford Anglia and Corsair, Morris 1100, Vauxhall Viva and Victor, Triumph 2000, Austin A60 and 1800, Sunbeam Alpine, Hillman Minx and Imp, Simca 1300 and the Ford Thames Van. According to Tri-ang expert Pat Hammond, some 10 million examples of Minix cars were churned out before production ceased in 1972.

Polythene toys
During the 1960s, the bulk of plastic toy production in Britain lay in another sector of the market altogether: playthings aimed at three to ten year-olds. By 1961, British plastic toy production had increased four-fold since 1950 and was currently worth £9 million, mainly consisting of toys made from ‘softer’ plastics – polythene and polypropylene. One trade journal identified a ‘clear trend towards working models of earth-moving equipment and other types of machinery used by road and building contractors, such as bulldozers, cranes and the like.’ Some of the many firms active in this field were Rosedale Associated Manufacturers, based in Glamorgan and well-known for its dolls; Raphael Lipkin of South Lambeth Road SW8 (Pippin Toys); Cassidy Brothers (Casdon) of Blackpool; Cherilea of Kirkham, Lancashire and Poplar Playthings of Bridgend, Glamorgan. The latter advertised prominently in toy trade journals and among its many plastic vehicles were: a London bus (1958), a Mercedes Gullwing Police Car and Fire Chief’s Car (1959), an MGA sports car, a Fire Engine copied from a Dinky Toy (1962) and a Ford Thames Trader (1963). Amazingly, the moulds for some of these survived: toy outlets in the early 2000s were still selling the bus under the name ‘Springwell Mouldings’.
The fact that there is still a place for these simple plastic toys forty-five years after they first appeared speaks volumes for their appeal, even if the advertising slogan on the bus – ‘Buy British Toys’ – is something of an anachronism in an era where practically every plaything is manufactured in the Far East.