The Toy Empire That Hot Wheels Destroyed

Stand on Lee Conservancy Road in Hackney today and you'd never know a global toy empire once stood there. At its peak, Matchbox produced 2.5 million toy car components every single day from one East London factory. Then, on June 11th 1982, it collapsed. This is the real story of Matchbox: the wartime metal shortage that nearly killed the company before it began, the tiny school rule that accidentally built a global empire, the Hot Wheels rivalry nobody took seriously, and the moment a hole smashed through the factory roof, symbolising the end of British toy manufacturing. 🚗 Did you grow up with Matchbox cars? Tell us your memories below. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ GraftUK tells the real stories behind Britain's most iconic brands. Subscribe:    / @graftuk.industrial   ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ #Matchbox #BritishBrands #ToyHistory #UKHistory #HotWheels #MadeInBritain #Lesney