A model car, or toy car, is a miniature representation of an automobile. Other miniature motor vehicles, such as trucks, buses, or even ATVs, etc. are often included in this general category. Because many miniature vehicles were originally aimed at children as playthings, there is no precise difference between a model car and a toy car, yet the word 'model' implies either assembly required or the accurate rendering of an actual vehicle at smaller scale. The kit building hobby became popular through the 1950s, while the collecting of miniatures by adults started to gain momentum around 1970. Precision-detailed miniatures made specifically for adults are a significant part of the market since the mid-1980s.
Louis Marx and Company was an American toy manufacturer in business from 1919 to 1980. They made many types of toys including tin toys, toy soldiers, toy guns, action figures, dolls, toy cars and model trains. Some of their notable toys are Rock'em Sock'em Robots, Big Wheel tricycles, Disney branded dollhouses and playsets based on TV shows like Gunsmoke. Its products were often imprinted with the slogan "One of the many Marx toys, have you all of them?"
Dinky Toys was the brand name for a range of die-cast zamak zinc alloy scale model vehicles, traffic lights, and road signs produced by British toy company Meccano Ltd. They were made in England from 1934 to 1979, at a factory in Binns Road in Liverpool.
Tonka is an American brand and former manufacturer of toy trucks. The company is known for making steel toy models of construction type trucks and machinery. Maisto International, which makes die-cast vehicles, acquired the rights to use the Tonka name in a line of 1:64 scale, featuring mostly trucks.
Maisto is a brand of scale model vehicles introduced in 1990 and owned by May Cheong Group, a Chinese company founded in 1967 in Hong Kong by brothers P.Y. Ngan and Y.C Ngan. Head-quartered in Hong Kong, the brand has its offices in the United States, France and China. MCG also owns other model car brands such as former Italian brand Bburago and Polistil.
Sieper Lüdenscheid GmbH & Co. KG, mostly known by its trade name Siku, is a German manufacturer of scale models headquartered in Lüdenscheid. Some of the products sold by Siku are model cars, figurines, model aircraft, model commercial vehicles, and model agricultural machinery. Traditionally, production was centered in Lüdenscheid, but diecast models are now made in China, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam.
Schuco is a German brand and former manufacturing company founded in 1912 by Heinrich Müller and the businessman Heinrich Schreyer in Nuremberg, popularly known as Germany's toy capital. The company's specialty was making toy reproductions of cars and trucks in tin, plastic and die-cast. The company went bankrupt in 1976 but was reorganized in 1993 and then totally independent again by 1996 before its acquisition by the Simba Dickie Group in 1999.
Choro-Q is a line of Japanese 3–4 cm pullback car toys produced by Takara. Known in North America as Penny Racers, they were introduced in late 1978 and have seen multiple revisions and successors since. Choro-Qs are stylized after real-world automobiles, with real rubber wheels and a pullback motor that makes them move. Each car has a coin slot at the back, where inserting a penny will make it perform a wheelie when the car is released.
Doepke Model Toys are a series of model toys produced by the Doepke Toy Company, based near Cincinnati, Ohio, USA. Doepke made several different types of toys including model automobiles such as the MG, 1955 Jaguar, a fire engine, trains and construction vehicles including bulldozers, graders, loaders, earth movers and cranes.
Tekno is a Danish manufacturing company of scale model trucks and other vehicles, currently headquartered in De Lier, Netherlands. Originally established and based in Copenhagen, Tekno began manufacturing construction toys in 1928 and model vehicles immediately after World War II, selling 1 million a year during its peak.
Conrad GmbH is a German manufacturer of diecast scale model trucks, primarily in 1:50 scale for use both as toys and promotional models by heavy equipment manufacturers. Conrad is one of the few European diecast companies which have not outsourced production to China or elsewhere in Asia. Conrad Modelle is headquartered in Kalchreuth, just northeast of Nuremberg.
The Auburn Rubber Company was a rubber products manufacturer best known for its line of children's toys. It was probably the largest producer of rubber and vinyl toys in the world, though Norway's Tomte Laerdal, Finland's Plasto, and Sweden's Galanite were major European producers.
Tootsietoy is a manufacturer of die cast toy cars and other toy vehicles which was originally based in Chicago, Illinois. Though the Tootsietoy name has been used since the 1920s, the company's origins date from about 1890. An enduring marque, toys with the Tootsietoy name were consistently popular from the 1930s through the 1990s.
Mikro'67 is a Bulgarian manufacturing company based in Razgrad, that produces and commercialises basketball backboards, outdoor recreation goods, toys, and scale model vehicles.
The Hubley Manufacturing Company was an American producer of a wide range of cast-iron toys, doorstops, and bookends. Toys, particularly motor vehicles and cap guns, were also produced in zinc alloy and plastic. The company is probably most well known for its detailed scale metal kits of Classic cars in about 1:20 scale. Starting in 1960, Hubley participated for a couple of years with Detroit automakers as a plastic promotional model maker. Many Hubley toys are now sought-after collectibles.
Gama is a German maker of toys, usually cars and trucks, dating from before World War I. The company is headquartered in Fürth, Bavaria, near Nürnberg, a traditional German toymaking center. Other German companies that competed with Gama Toys were Schuco Modell and Conrad Models.
Cursor Modell was a German company making models of antique and modern German vehicles. It is best known for its plastic replicas of vehicles mainly of the era 1880 to about 1920, produced for, and sold in, the Daimler-Benz museum in Stuttgart.
Kaden Nachod is the somewhat anglicized name for the Kovodružstvo Náchod toy factory in the town of Nový Hrádek in the Czech Republic. The factory, however, started making toys about 1950 when the country was still communist united Czechoslovakia.
Holand Oto is a Dutch manufacturing company based in Weert that produces diecast scale model cars and trucks. The company was established in 1959 in Heerlen as "Bestbox", then changing its name to "Efsi" in early 1970s.
