Originally set up in 2021 as an independent customer of Corgi Toys, it recreated highly accurate replicas of Corgi’s own 1960s model cars and distinctive packaging, as if they were brand new products. Corgi made them on its modern production lines. However, when Corgi’s owner Hornby noticed the club was typically selling 5,000 models per month, it liked the idea so much that it bought the company. The Corgi Model Club officially became part of Hornby early this year and gained access to more resources.

Printweek’s correspondent Simon Eccles is right in the target demographic of 60s kids who kept a nostalgic love of the Corgi models they either owned first time around, or wished they had, but originals today tend to fetch very high prices. He discovered the club through its lively Facebook page, and signed up.

But being in the print business, he was also intrigued by the excellent boxes the replica cars ship in, as they are also exact and very high quality reproductions of the 1960s originals. Every box design is unique and the artwork looks brand new, but uses the original illustrations and distinctive Corgi house colours. How do they do it?

Models of the golden era

First, some history. Hornby, of model railway fame, is the current owner of Corgi Toys (as well as Airfix, Scalextric and other familiar toy and model railway names, but not the old Hornby brands Dinky and Meccano). It’s based in Margate, though production has inevitably moved to China.

First introduced in 1956, Corgi Toys had a factory in Swansea (hence the Welsh Corgi mascot) and its models were usually ahead of rivals like Dinky and Spot-On with features such as windows, interiors, working features and gimmicks. Sophistication increased throughout the 1960s ‘golden era’, but from the mid-1970s economic pressures led to simplification. Corgi then went through a series of owners before UK-based Hornby acquired it in 2008.

The idea for the Corgi Model Club came from Mike Goode and his colleague Guy Stainthorpe. Goode was originally a packaging designer but in the 1980s he moved to IPC Magazines and eventually became head of design aged 28. He left in 1995 and became a consultant with a partwork company called Orbis. That became the UK wing of Atlas Editions, a French partwork publisher that among other things, commissioned accurate replicas of old 1950s French Dinky cars and trucks. These were good quality and keenly priced, but the Atlas range was phased out in 2018 after it was acquired by the Italian company DeAgostini.

Stainthorpe had a partwork background and had been managing director of Atlas UK. Goode says: “I spoke to Guy – we are a similar age – and said we should be doing Corgi Toys reproductions. Corgi had been making specials for Atlas, such as Eddie Stobart trucks, buses, etc, and military aircraft types. We also knew the MD of Corgi, Lyndon Davies. Lyndon agreed to try it, and it grew from there.”

In 2021 Stainthorpe arranged funding from a start-up investment company he co-founded, Blue14. The first trial model, an Ice Cream Van that played musical chimes, was one of Stainthorpe’s youthful memories. Helped by Suzy Cooper, an experienced partwork marketer, the Corgi Model Club took off rapidly from its first releases early in 2022 and now has around 5,000 members.

Membership and growth

Loosely based on the partworks concept and charging £28.98 per month, the Corgi Model Club is highly flexible, so members can join or leave at any time, and skip or return models they don’t want. Non-members can buy models from the website too (www.corgimodelclub.com), though prices are higher. So far CMC has released 44 models, one per month. Corgi produced several hundred models and variations in the 1960s and early 70s, so there are plenty more to come.

This worked so well commercially that Goode says: “By last year Corgi was looking over the fence and thinking we were doing better than they were!” Negotiations started, and this spring Corgi acquired the Corgi Model Club and carried on developing collectible models. Stainthorpe is now heading all Corgi operations including the CMC.

Personnel haven’t changed, as there were never many to start with. Stainthorpe heads it up with Cooper as head of marketing. West Quay, a fulfilment company in Southampton, handles the complex mailings and requests, as not all customers are at the same stage in the release cycle. Goode modestly calls himself a consultant and works on product research and development with the Corgi diecast teams, including Corgi’s in-house packaging designer Jules Coomber, senior brand creative for graphic design and artwork.

Scanning the originals

Few original diecast moulds have survived of the 1960s models, but they are not needed. Instead, modern tool sets are created from scratch, based on lidar scans of the original models to create 3D CAD files. The results are exact replicas apart from base plates that now say “Made in China” instead of “Made in Gt Britain.”

Goode says it can take a year to source and scan original models and boxes, design the moulds and new boxes, organise production in China and get the models shipped halfway around the world. Moulds can cost £15,000-£35,000 alone. Because the boxes are filled in China, they are litho printed and converted there too.

However some paper inserts and instruction sheets are printed in the UK, formerly by Whitmont Press in Dartford and now Identity Colour in London. So are two exact reproductions of period A5 Corgi catalogues (1966 and 1969, with 40 and 48 pages), and most recently one for the modern CMC, he says.

Working at Hornby’s Margate HQ, Coomber recreates all-new boxes herself, using modern digital techniques. “Hornby Hobbies acquired Corgi in 2008 and the physical archive we inherited did not go as far back as the 1960s Corgi Toys models,” she says. “The vintage boxes are therefore sourced by our development team, who then pass them on to me along with a technical specification document. We then use the original boxes as a template and start recreating them by scanning some parts in, redrawing others and creating a new cutter guide.”

Legal requirements

Today’s legally required panels with age guide, safety and other information were not on the original packaging, she says. Car manufacturers are now much more protective of their ‘intellectual property’ and model makers have to license designs and acknowledge copyright – examples are last year’s famous Corgi James Bond Aston and this year’s Batmobile CMC re-issues. So this is reflected on the boxes and model bases too.

“Some of the original boxes have unique artwork on every face so some slight tweaking of the position of graphics had to be made as a compromise,” says Coomber. “Some simpler box designs will only take a day to reproduce, but some of the more complicated ones have taken up to two weeks.

Goode says that old original boxes are found by scouring the internet, sometimes finding them on eBay, or with collectors and museums. Coomber says “It is a complete lottery as to what lands on my desk. Original boxes from this time are often scarce, especially those that remain in excellent condition.

“These models are older than I am, so the very fact any of the boxes have survived at all is a testament to how much these models are loved – but those that have survived have had 60 years of life of their own!”

Respect for old designers

In the 1960s, box designers were hands-on. They used graphic pens like Rotrings, rub-down transfer lettering (Letraset), printed colour charts to specify tints to process camera operators, and airbrushes to paint the car illustrations.

“The way these boxes were originally created is from a whole different world to the way we work today,” says Coomber, “and I have the greatest respect for any graphic designer who worked before the Macintosh came along and did not have Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator to create the packaging artwork as we do now.”

The Corgi Toys colour palette and fonts present further challenges, she says. “The 1960s team was obviously constrained by what was possible back then, so our approach is to make the packaging as they would have wanted it to look, rather than carry over any mistakes, printing errors or inconsistencies.”

Digital techniques

“To maintain that consistency some of the elements needed to be reproduced as vector graphics, such as the Corgi Toys logo and block colours. Line illustrations can be redrawn easily in Illustrator, but all the paintings needed to be restored in Photoshop with either clipping paths or bleed added. We first have to remove the dots to prevent moiré patterns, and also because it makes retouching possible to remove any damage. Then we must correct the colour, which can only be done by eye and some guesswork as to what it would have originally looked like.”

Finding matching fonts can be difficult, she says, but less so than outline-tracing all the tiny text on so many boxes. Some calligraphy lettering has to be recreated in Illustrator, however.

“We retain as much as we can of the originals, but ultimately, they were designed and made by Corgi, as these new ones are, just a different generation,” says Coomber. “They all make up Corgi’s rich history and are definitely now in the Corgi Toys canon, as it were. And I hope in 60 years’ time, a future Corgi graphic designer will be recreating some of our current box designs and carrying on the legacy!”