#1072 LLEDO - LAND SPEED LEGENDS (1993)

It is not so long ago I wrote my first entry about Lledo in this blog. There I mentioned this set of six cars that I didn´have yet, but I recently received it from a friend and I´d like to comment it now.

The cars represented are:

• Thrust 2 / Richard Noble (1983)

• Spirit of America / Craig Breedlove (1965)

• Railton Mobil Special / John Cobb (1947)

• Blue Bird / Sir Malcolm Campbell (1931) 

The set was first available as a cereal premium from Kelloggs in the UK in 1993. They came in white cardboard boxes inside a bigger box and included a nice brochure or small poster with a history of the cars that had broken the land speed record over the years, depicted in a timeline. The gift is a great one, maybe one of the best gifts I recall from a cereal promotion. At the time you needed 9 points plus 80 pence (that is less than one euro) to receive ALL FOUR cars. Nine points were most likely four big boxes of Corn Flakes plus a smaller one, or nine small boxes. Not so much if you have them for breakfast everyday. There was also the option to get only one model (with less points), but in this case the leaflet was not sent along with the chosen car in the white case.

As Lledo is known for reusing the casts they have, the same models were available for everybody in retail. In this case, the boxes was much more elaborated and nicer, with windows and with a short summary on the history of the four models in the back of the box. There is a second type of box for the Thrust 2 which was exclusive for this model at the Museum of British Road Transport in Coventry.

The cars are easily found online and cheap to buy (the poster is not so cheap, usually more expensive than the complete set of cars), I guess there are not so many Lledo collectors out there and they are not very well known, but they are beautiful, done with great care, nice paintwork and tampographies... a nice addition to every collection. The only negative point that we can find are the undetailed plastic bases and the white boxes, but taken out for display in shelves these two aspects are not important.

FACTS AND FIGURES: 

• Name: LAND SPEED LEGENDS
• Scale: Approx. 1:43
• Year: 1993
• Company: Lledo (United Kingdom)
• Size: approx. 10 cm

#1016 LLEDO – FOUR 3M PROMOTIONAL MODELS (Around 1994)

I missed Lledo for the first 1015 entries on this blog for a reason. Although I have seen many of these models over the years, I never bought them, as I was not very interested. I had some Models of Yesteryear, but I sold these many years ago, and kept only the three or four of them, which I liked most.
 
The company was co-founded in 1982 by Jack Odell, who was also the co-founder of Matchbox many years before (the brand name is his surname spelled backwards). The other founding member was Burt Russell. The 80s was a golden age of these classic cars miniatures, and I guess Lledo just wanted to ride this wave and make some business with classic miniatures. However it was bad times for the die-cast industry, and Matchbox had been purchased by Universal, that moved the production factories to Macau, as it was very expensive to produce toys in the United Kingdom.
 
Lledo actually bought some tooling from the old Matchbox plants that were being dismantled and started producing in their own facilities in Enfield. This would last a few years, until 1999, when the company went bankruptcy, but the brand passed to Corgi Classics, that exploited the brand until 2005, all these later cars are “made in China”.
 
How to compete against east-Asian produced toys? Well, they specialize in classic vintage cars and commercial vehicles, as I said before, which was rather uncommon at the time. On top of that, they offered many chances to customize their references for big brands, as they could place their logo in any of the available models (vans, trucks, some cars…) and make nice promotional items. Placing your logo in a car from the 1920s gives your company a certain aura of quality, tradition and market leadership, so it was a good idea. Obviously, Asians would finally imitate and overtake Lledo with much cheaper products, but these 15 years were good ones, with high production volumes.
 
The first and best known series is called Days Gone (which sounds a bit like Yesteryear) and came out in 1983. The first models were all horse-drawn and stagecoaches, but soon appeared the Ford Model T van. These are marked on the base “Days Gone”.
 
The “promotional” series that I already introduced was the most profitable. During the first six years of production, Lledo had around thirty casts/models, but, out of them, there were hundreds of variations catalogued. The Ford T was the most common, and was produced in over 170 different decorations. The Double Decker bus also had a big success. Each of these “promotional” model was made, with some exceptions, in very limited runs of 500 to 1000 units. Promotional models are marked on the base “Lledo Promotional Model”.
 
Maybe the most interesting models ever made by Lledo are the four land speed record cars, a series made for Kellogg´s. All four were based on new casts and never reused, and they do not fit with all the other references available in their catalogue.
 
Finally, the Vanguards series included more modern cars, from the 50s and the 60s, British and Europeans. The line was excellent in detail and quality.
 
Some models were sold to second parties and relabeled accordingly, for example, under the Hartoys or Edocar brands.
 
The models presented in this entry are 4 promotional models made for 3M. They are all different, and comes in their independent blank boxes. There were dozens of models made for 3M, some of them were sold in ordinary boxes with windows, so I suppose these were not intended for retailers.

Packard Town Van (1933)

 Chevrolet Panel Van (1939)

Packard Van (1936)

Model T Ford Van (1920)

FACTS AND FIGURES:

• Name: Ford Model T, Packard Van, Packard Town Van, Chevrolet Panel Van
• Scale: 1:43 (approx.)
• Year: Around 1994
• Company: Lledo (United Kingdom)
• Size: approx 9 cm