When Corgi struck gold: the story behind the first superstar toy

Christmas day would never be the same again

In October 1965, a 4in-long model car became the very first Christmas blockbuster toy, causing retail frenzy among parents desperate to get hold of one.

That toy was the Corgi replica of James Bond’s Aston Martin DB5 from Goldfinger: a gadget-laded technological tour-de-force that pretty much launched the craze for product tie-ins and changed toys forever.

More than 4m of them were eventually sold and today a mint one can fetch hundreds of pounds. So how did it come about – and what made it so special? 

Here’s the full story behind a miniature legend.

Late to the party

Improbably, the world’s most famous toy car almost didn’t happen at all. 

Corgi’s parent company Mettoy only heard that an Aston Martin DB5 would be one of the stars of Goldfinger three days before the film opened in September 1964. 

Four pictures of the DB5 with Sean Connery in the film were printed in the local Northampton paper, and chief designer Marcel Van Cleemput left a copy on the desk of Corgi head Howard Fairbairn with a note that read: ‘Something we should get on to quickly.’ 

Must-have gadgets

The usually bullish Fairbairn was unmoved, feeling it would be too complex. However, as the film’s global success rocketed, he knew he had goofed. 

At a hastily convened meeting in early January, Mettoy top brass said they simply must do the car, and that three key features of the full-size DB5 were essential: the ejector seat with a flip-up roof panel, a pop-up bulletproof rear screen, and front bumper overriders that sprang out along with concealed machine guns.

Rush job

With the film about to come out, there was no time for the usual modelling process involving painstaking drawings, beautiful 1:12-scale masters in hardwood, resin casts, and accurate reduction by pantograph to produce the moulds for diecasting.

Fortunately, though, Corgi already had a DB4 in the range and that was hastily modified into a DB5. 

As Tim Richards, one of the designers behind it, says: “It was a botch job, to be honest.” 

Innovative engineering

Meanwhile, the task of engineering the internal mechanisms fell to another Corgi artist, John Marshall. 

“I got the car functioning in a week,” he says. “That’s when they gave it the go-ahead – I kicked it off, really. 

“I cut the aperture in a DB4’s roof and figured out how to do the ejector seat. Plastic slides would wear out in a week, so I made an arm and bearing across the back-seat moulding, on two pins in a bearing housing. It was frictionless, and incorporated a butterfly spring in the release.”

Q branch

To open the roof and trigger the ejector seat to jettison Bond’s adversary, Marshall positioned a tiny release button under the Aston’s sill. 

There was a similar control to deploy the concealed machine-guns, while the pop-up bullet shield in the boot was activated by pushing in the exhaust pipes. 

Even with all that ingenuity, Corgi’s management had to be convinced the miniature mechanisms were strong enough to withstand being played with relentlessly.

The forerunner

Corgi’s first involvement with moving-image merchandising had been more straightforward. 

Peter Katz, Mettoy’s regional sales manager for Scandinavia, was talking to a Swedish wholesaler one day when he asked if there was anything Corgi could do for the territory that would boost sales. 

He was told: “Well, a popular programme in Sweden is The Saint, and he drives a Volvo P1800; can’t you sell that as The Saint’s Volvo?”

Saintly toy

Katz took the idea back to Northampton and Van Cleemput regarded the transformation as “a natural”. The existing Corgi P1800 gained a white paintjob, The Saint ‘stickman’ bonnet decal and a tiny, plastic Roger Moore driver figure.

Together with new box artwork and eager approval from ATV (although, according to Van Cleemput, no royalties were paid for a licence), the effect in 1965 was electric. 

The standard Volvo sold 315,000 examples in three years, but the Saint version shipped 321,000 in its first nine months, and went on to sell 1.2m. 

A special package

The ‘as seen on TV’ tag was clearly an enormous draw among toy-car buyers, so Corgi brilliantly exploited the goldmine when it came to its next tie-in: the Bond DB5.

The car came packaged in a superb box with display stand and ‘secret operating instructions’, a 007 jacket lapel sticker and spare baddie – the latter very important, given that the tiny figure would regularly be flung across the room by the ejector seat, sparking many a frantic (and fruitless) hunt under chairs and behind cupboards.

Late shifts

The Bond DB5 hit the shops in October ’65, a year since Goldfinger itself had opened, but still took the toy market by storm.

It was made by Mettoy at its Swansea factory and the clamour led to workers’ shifts extending late into the night, with lorries on standby to deliver by morning.

Gold-flinger

The factory could produce about 10,000 daily, each with 28 components. Fiddly assembly by hand was the only option.

The cars were sprayed in gold enamel, rather than the authentic silver, which was perceived as unpainted and unworthy of the 10-shilling price.

Sales success

Regardless, it suited the smash-hit’s title. The frazzled production line (almost entirely female, chosen for their nimble fingerwork) got 750,000 into shops before Christmas Eve. But that was only the start: almost four million had been sold by 1970.

In demand

On its initial release, newshounds descended on the toy sections of department stores to report on the clamour. 

Mettoy advertising manager Bill Baxter told the Daily Mirror: “We never in our wildest dreams expected such phenomenal sales. We have now doubled production but many children will not be able to get one for Christmas.”

Toy of the Year

The car won the inaugural Toy of the Year award from the National Association of Toy Retailers in 1966. But demand remained huge long after Goldfinger left cinemas. 

An upgraded edition was launched in 1968 with cleaner castings, an authentic silver finish, and a new feature in the form of miniature tyre-slashers in the rear wheel centres. It sold more than 1.2m units and was in the Corgi catalogue into the early ’70s.

Models of the Batmobile, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and another Bond car, the submarine Lotus Esprit, all followed in subsequent years but popular though they were, none matched the impact of the DB5.

In all likelihood, no other toy ever will.