Toy Collectors Price Guide - The Full Collection Scalextric
The vintage toy that slots of fun! Scalextric has become a household name since being launched in 1957.
No matter what decade you grew up in, the Scalextric name is as familiar as Dinky, Hornby and Corgi. These speedy little electric cars have been entertaining kids and adults for more than 50 years – even if they do have a tendency to fly off corners and get lost under the bed. Nowadays they’ve also become extremely collectable, with collectors keen to get their hands on the early pieces… particularly the original tinplate designs.
The story of Scalextric dates back to the 1940s when keen racing enthusiast and engineer Fred Francis set up Minimodels Ltd in 1947. Based in London, Minimodels launched the Scalex series of toy racing cars, which featured a clockwork motor that could be operated using the car’s steering wheel. These charming replica motors were a huge success (with more than 7,000 being produced every week in the early ‘50s) but by 1956 sales had started to slide so Francis needed to come up with something new.
His ambition was to give the player more control over the car, rather than just winding it up and then watching as it zipped across the floor. As a result he started to look at alternative ways of propulsion and with the rise in electric powered model railways, he naturally turned his attentions to electricity. Originally he just popped an electric motor into the existing Scalex cars and experimented with running them on railway track.
Not happy with this method, his next solution was to make a rubber slotted track and use a ‘gimbal’ wheel (a pivoted support that allows rotation around a single axis) that
could pick up the electrical current that ran through a conductor in the centre of the track. Meanwhile, the ‘driver’ could control the car with an on-off button to help it safely travel around the track.
Francis launched Scalextric at the Harrogate International Toy Fair in January 1957 and it was met with immediate acclaim. The name of the new toy was a simple combination of Francis’ established brand name of Scalex and ‘electric’. The first set launched to the public included a figure eight of track and a pair of Maseratis, the following year they were joined by a Ferrari and Austin Healey.
However, Scalextric was a victim of its own success and Minimodels simply could not keep up with the huge demand. As a result in 1958 Francis sold the business to Lines Brothers and went off to pursue his interests in motoring and aviation. At the time Lines was operating both Triang and Rovex, the latter of which specialised in creating plastic toys, so it quickly began developing new Scalextric cars that were made from plastic, rather than tinplate.
In 1965 Lines also switched from making the track out of rubber to a moulded plastic track… something we’ve all become used to seeing today. Despite Lines pumping out thousands and thousands of Scalextric cars, it tried to ensure quality by including a piece of test track at the end of each production line.
The ‘60s were certainly the golden years of Scalextric with numerous innovations and new sets, along with numerous accessories so people could create their own model railwaystyle layouts. ■