Corgi Toys‘ most successful period was between 1965 and 1968, when over 60 million toys were sold, this coincided with the introduction into the range of film and TV related vehicles. Two of them the Batmobile and James Bond’s Aston Martin were the best selling Corgi cars ever.

I am not a great collector of TV and film related cars but I have added a few to my collection. James Bond has a lot of nice cars to play with. In my collection I have three: the Sunbeam Alpine from Dr No, the Aston Martin from Thunderball and Aki’s Toyota 2000GT from You Only Live Twice. These are all Chinese made models from TicToc and Universal Hobbies, I’d love the Corgi Aston, if I ever find it at a sensible price.

Dinky only obtained the rights for the Gerry Anderson TV Series. I remember on my first day of school (September 1969) playing with the Dinky Captain Scarlet Maximum Security Vehicle. I don’t remember anything else from my first day at school, neither the teachers nor the separation from my mother.

Hot Wheels have put out a number of TV related vehicles recently, including several different Batmobiles, the only one that interests me is the 1968 one from the rather camp TV series, and I have yet to find that one, but I ve seen lots of the more modern ones from the films in the shops.

I have bought a few which for me are full of childhood nostalgia: Scooby Doo’s Mystery Machine, I used to love watching that cartoon, Herbie from The Love Bug (1968), one of the first films I ever saw at the cinema and a great influence on my interest in cars and strangely Star Trek’s USS Enterprise, which seems an unusual choice for a Hot Wheels having no wheels and being far from the rough 1:64 scale of the rest of the range.

Or for a retro futuristic vibe, there is the Jetsons Capsule Car.

From more recent films, I have two Toyotas: the Supra driven by Paul Walker in Fast and Furious and the Toyota AE 86 used to deliver tofu by Itsuki Takeuchi in Initial D.

The only Corgi TV tie in car I have is the Audi Quattro driven by Gene Hunt in the TV Series Ashes to Ashes.

I also have a small Inspector Morse Jaguar Mark 2.

I’m looking out for a few other film and TV related vehicles: Captain Scarlet’s Spectrum Maximum Security Vehicle, the Saint’s Volvo, the Batmobile from the TV series and Starsky and Hutch’s Ford Torino.

Update: Found the TV Series Batmobile 🙂

Keep watching this blog… 😉

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