I am by no means a fan of Corgi's output after the mid-1970s but I have recently acquired a bundle of Corgi Collector magazines issued from January 1986 to Christmas 1989. These have been fascinating, with contributions from collectors and Corgi staff on occasion too. One contributor, who I hope will not mind my reproducing part of his article here, was Roderick Ward, who wrote in 40 years ago as follows:
"The new Corgi management is run by a group of people who were nearly all Mettoy managers but rarely in a position then to make decisions regarding choice of model subject, quality, target market and so on. They were aware that somewhere down the line collectors had been lost to Corgi and a sneaking feeling that this market was possibly larger than previously thought. It may surprise collectors to know that Corgi were unaware that all those promotional Routemasters in funny colours, when they first appeared, were being bought by adults. When this realisation dawned, an attempt was made to identify this market.
We have already seen the first fruits of this realisation. In the Thorneycroft and Renault vintage trucks and the 99p 1:43 scale cars. the message has got across that 1:43 is the scale collectors want, and children will buy it, but other messages have not got through yet. A make soon gets devalued for collectors if too many variations of colour or livery is produced (Thorneycroft vans). Finish and detail should not be too obviously cheap (1:43 cars). Packaging should not be too brash or childish or too space-consuming (whole range). I fear that the latter fault may be due to the employment of an outside agency, who took the existing "36 months" target age range too literally.
Another crossed line is in connection with reissued models. Many people would like to see re-issues if ever possible of early Corgi models from the blue box or yellow and blue box era. Lowest priority for reissue would be the Corgi Classics, so what was chosen for reissue? You guessed it.
When the new company was formed, there was a lot of goodwill around. we all wished Corgi well, and were prepared to accept a few faults, a few too many RM liveries and some strange marketing decisions. Now perhaps we can look forward to Corgi responding actively to demand. You don't have to be a Frank Hornby these days, with an instinctive feel for what the market needs. You just need to listen, as collectors are very vocal, very opinionated and will talk your ear off all day with what they want.
You can always tell when a model range is confidently put together, and it usually strikes a chord with collectors who not only avidly collect them, but have a good idea of what they will be collecting in the future from that range. We're not quite there with Corgi yet, but I hope that the next year will see the final meshing of collectors' interests and Corgi's products."
As we now know, things did not change very quickly and rather more changes of ownership were to follow. And, of course, Hornby, as a company if not Frank, eventually told hold of the reins after all and we do now get re-issues of models we had hoped to see again.
I am aware, though, that there are people who do collect Corgis from the 1980s and, from what I can tell, there is limited material available by way of comprehensive lists of what was actually issued in those pretty mad and, on occasion, desperate times. So I thought it might be helpful to a few people out there to see what these magazines included by way of model variations that they may not know about. Each month there was a section that showed the special issues being released, either for export or as a limited edition for a particular organisation, some of which may have reached normal dealers too.
At this link are extracts from the magazines I have, detailing the export and special editions over that period.
There was also an interesting series of articles about the many editions of the Ford Escort Van too, which may help those seeking to discover whether they have a complete collection or not!
These models, as I said at the start, are not going to be everyone's cup of tea but I know there are a number of people who do like them and, with prices really very cheap in many instances - including the scarce editions as many dealers simply don't appreciate they are scarce - they may be able to build something quite worthwhile for a very modest outlay.
Of course, by publishing this I may have scuppered some chances of finding a bargain, for which I suppose I should apologise!
If anyone would like to buy the magazines themselves, get in touch. I have 18 and they're all clean and tidy. Issues 12 to 32 with one or two missing. There's quite a bit from contributors about the original Corgis too which makes them worth browsing.
