Those “Off Brands” we had as Kids: Where are your Yatming, Playart, and Zylmex Die-Cast Cars Today?

While still continuing to blog about slot car building, collecting, and racing, I’m going to be turning the attention of this here blog o’mine back toward the die-cast side of my toy car hobby over the next few weeks, to showcase some projects I’ve worked on in the past and a few I’m working on now that I hope some readers may find interesting. As I stated in my earliest posts, I’ve been a die-cast collector literally all my life, and it is my love for the 1:64 scale cars of my youth that drove my adult interest in HO scale slot cars.

When it comes to die-cast, my primary area of interest is the Lesney Matchbox series from 1953 to 1983, and I still consider myself first and foremost to be a Matchbox Collector. But, as a car crazy kid, I had a lot of other brands as well, and a web search today reveals I’m far from the only one who remembers these! Detailed discussions about these brands can be found on Hobby Talk, HobbyDB, Planet Diecast, Diecast Xchange, and other websites, and some even have standalone fan-sites. Some of the older cars by some of these “off brands” are quite valuable today, which isn’t surprising because a lot of them are rare; since they were often subpar in quality and detail from the popular Matchbox, Hot Wheels, and Tomica cars of the day, they seem to have lower survival rates than even those toys.

Many of these brands were sold in grocery stores which, when I was a kid at least, did not carry the better known and more popular brands for the most part. What I remember most of about these brands was that it seemed like there was at least one car made by each that was unique, that I couldn’t get from any other maker, which is often why I owned them. Those were the exceptions, however; more often, it seemed like these “off brands” were doing little more than copying Matchbox, Hot Wheels, or Tomica, and thus in many cases they made versions of the exact same cars as the big and well-known brands, often with results that bordered on comical.

Another element to consider is that there were tremendously incestuous relationships between many of the Asian brands, in which one company would go out of business to be acquired by another who would reissue the same cars with different wheels or paint schemes, and often the same company would release toys under multiple different brands concurrently, and it won’t surprise you to know that kind of thing is still going on today! Going into the history of all this is surely fascinating, but beyond the scope of what I can do in this post, so rather than a detailed history lesson, this is just a quick look back in amusement at some of the toys cars I regarded as “junk” when I was a kid that, in some cases, I now wish I’d had a little more respect for!

PLAYART

Probably the best of the “off brands” and one of the oldest, Playart cars were made in Hong Kong and were sold in the US primarily through two vendors: Woolworths, who branded them as “Peelers,” and Sears, who marketed them as “Road Mates,” although I also remember in the early 80’s they showed up in cheaper variations under their own name as the Playart “Fast Wheel.” Though the quality of the Playart brand declined over the years, the older cars are actually quite nice, having both metal bodies and baseplates, and the early versions had thin axles with wheels featuring separate (and thus detachable) chrome hubcaps in a design similar to the early Hot Wheels. More than any other “off brand,” Playart made some interesting cars which other imprints did not offer.

In particular I remember their Rolls Royce Silver Shadow 2-door coupe, a Honda S800 roadster, a Porsche 914, a Fiat Dino coupe, a late 60’s Toyota Corona 2-door hardtop, an early ‘70’s Toyota Corolla, and a BMW 2002, which has only mercifully been rendered anew in the last decade or so by Matchbox under Mattel ownership. They made a Range Rover 2-door with opening doors which was significantly nicer than the Matchbox “Roll-A-Matic” rendering, and they were also the only one that made a 1969 Mustang as a notchback coupe; most of the “big boys” rendered early Mustangs as fastbacks. These were some of the highpoints of an otherwise highly derivative product line that included a ’68 Camaro, the same year’s Plymouth Barracuda, and an AMX, all which seemed like copies of Hot Wheels, several others which were copies of Husky/Corgi Jr’s, and even their own variation of the Lamborghini Marzal, an unusual one-off show car that could only have been a copy of the Matchbox model.

While the early Playart cars are pleasing in their heft and weight, they still left a lot to be desired in the detail department, and as time went on they got cheaper and cheaper, first with a more basic one-piece wheel design, then plastic baseplates, and later the abandonment of metallic paint in favor of a limited pallet of basic enamel colors. The early cars, however, seem to be quite collectible today, and are now surprisingly expensive when found in good condition.

YATMING

Another brand that goes back a long way and that made some interesting cars is Yatming. As a company, Yatming’s product line was all over the map; some of their cars were of rather nice quality having metal baseplates and opening doors, while others were cut-rate junk. They also made toy cars in many different scales, and they would reissue the same castings over and over again through the years with different wheels, different paint, and in different quality brackets under different superficial brand names. When I was a kid in the 70’s and very early 80’s Yatming was on a roll and made some unusual cars that no other maker gave us. Some of the more memorable castings from this brand included a BMW 2800 sedan, an Opel Admiral, and a Dodge Aspen 2-door coupe.

They are also the only company I am aware of that ever made a model of the Chevy Chevette in 1:64! Yatmings were also sold under the name “Road Champs” which had a wide distribution in the US, and they are probably best remembered for a line of semi-tractor/trailer rigs which, while still being largely plastic and not terribly well made, were nicely detailed and at least “scale correct” for 1:64 trucks, which you couldn’t say about many Matchbox and Hot Wheels models (Matchbox’s excellent “Convoy” line was the exception). The Road Champs truck line, which at one point was sold by retail juggernaut Toys R Us, found favor with collectors and they are quite hot items today. My personal favorite memory of this brand was a series of 1960’s American cars they released around 1980 which included a ’64 Chevy Impala, and a Ford Galaxie 2-door fastback, a Mustang notchback coupe, and a Chevy Malibu hardtop, all 1966 models. That may not seem impressive now, but in 1980 they were only ones making those awesome cars, and I had them all!

As I understand it, today some of the Yatming castings have been reissued by a company called Motor Max. Although I have not obtained any of these as of this writing, they make a series of 1970’s “malaise cars” called “Fresh Cherries,” which seem kind of cool as diorama pieces, and that Chevy Chevette is one of them. There may be some Yatmings on my diorama yet!

KENNER “FAST 111’s”

This is kind of an outlier on this list, in part because Kenner making die-cast cars was kind of an outlier! I never had more than a couple of these because I didn’t like them, because they were almost all made up “fantasy cars” of the type popularized by Hot Wheels in the early 70’s; it was these “fantasy cars” that turned me into a Matchbox fan as a kid, because I always wanted my die-casts to look like models of real cars. Even so, Kenner’s “Fast Ones” (spelled out as “Fast 111’s”) did have one cool and unique feature: each car had a unique license plate decal affixed to an awkwardly large rear bumper molded as part of the baseplate. Each license plate represented a different US state and they were all said to be “one-of-a-kind,” quite an accomplishment back in this era. The early cars also came with a “title” card on the back of the package you could pen your name on and that could be “signed over” to someone else if you sold or traded one with a friend. Neat idea! Too bad most of the cars themselves looked like poo.

Despite being a large and well-funded toy company, Kenner’s foray into the 1:64 diecast market seemed brief; Fast 111’s quietly disappeared from the market after only a few years and to my knowledge (though I might well be wrong) they never followed up on this effort. These cars seem surprisingly cheap to buy on today’s collector market, which I suppose reflects their lack of popularity when new.  

ZEE/ZYLMEX

These toys were marketed under so many different brands its hard to even mention them all: Dyna-Wheels, Dart-Wheels, Wind Racers, and Pacesetters were just some of the names that appeared on the blister cards of these mostly unimpressive toys. For the most part their product line was very boring, being just your standard fare of Corvettes and Mustangs and 280Z’s and trucks and vans, and as with all these “off brands” the quality varied widely. They did make a few nice models; they did a ’56 T-bird and a ’57 Corvette which were nicely realized, and there was a Toyota Corona (or Skyline) sedan and an Audi 100 which were interesting, being that no one else made those (Siku did make an Audi 100 I believe, but when I was a kid Siku models were almost non-existent in the US; I never saw them in any but the most unusual import toy stores and they were too expensive for my mom and dad’s malaise-era pocketbooks). They also made a model of a ’32 Ford hot rod pick-up which was unusual and really cool; I had a couple of those as a kid.

Unusually, Zylmex was also the only company at the time that made a straight-ahead, no nonsense model of the DeLorean! Considering the popularity of this car amongst juveniles back when they were new, it seems odd to me that every die cast manufacturer didn’t make one, but as I understand it, it had something to do with the DMC being very stingy about licensing. I’m not sure how Zylmex overcame that, but their DeLorean was about the only one you could get in 1:64 back in the day, and it had opening gull-wing doors in addition to a metal baseplate, so this is one I remember well and still have today!

The one area where Zee/Zylmex did do nice job was their line of small die-cast aircraft. While out of scale with the cars, these were nicely made in an era when affordable diecast aircraft were very hard to find; only Matchbox had anything like it with the “Skybusters” series, and these again always seemed harder to come by than they should have been. I didn’t have many of them because of the scale issue, but some of my friends collected them, and they were pretty cool, both then and now.

KIDCO (aka Tough Wheels)

Kidco made some interesting toy cars back in the day; one of their lines was a series of hefty metal 1:64’s called “Lockups,” which had opening doors which could be locked shut by turning a metal key (provided in the package) in a keyhole in the baseplate. Then there were the “Key Cars,” which featured a spring-loaded hole in the back bumper into which you could insert a plastic key-shaped object that would compress the spring and click into place so that when you squeezed the key, it would release and the spring tension would shoot the car across your kitchen floor.

Both of these were cool ideas in terms of play value, but in my boyhood search for realism they didn’t interest me much. Kidco’s main line of ordinary die-cast cars were marketed as “Tough Wheels,” and ordinary they were, offering very little in the way of castings that you couldn’t get from other companies that made higher quality cars. There were a few exceptions: their best car was a ’63 Corvette Stingray which was quite nicely done, better than the concurrent Hot Wheels, I thought; as a kid I had this one in both a dark metallic blue and bright light blue, both with an orange and yellow flamejob across the hood. They made a ’56 Corvette and a Gen 1 Mustang ‘vert that weren’t bad, but that was really about it; all the other “Tough Wheels” models were dull as toilet paper, and only their TV show and movie tie-ins like their “Cannonball Run” releases seem in the least bit interesting today. Anyone out there actually collect these?

ERTL

Mainly known as a maker of larger scale metal farm and construction toys, Ertl’s 1:64-ish toy cars were generally of poor quality and detail, however, Ertl deserve some credit for doing some interesting things, and doing them their own way. Their most collectible toys were their line of cars based on “The Dukes of Hazzard,” which were popular when they were new and are even more so today; though hardly rare, their model of the General Lee is well-remembered and sells for quite a high price in today’s market, and complete D.o.H. playsets in good condition sell for amazingly high prices.

What I remember best about Ertl’s foray into 1:64 is a series of 1950’s cars that they released around 1981. These were really cool because for the most part they were cars that no one else was making at the time; the ’55 Nomad was covered by Hot Wheels and the ’57 Bel-Air was made by almost everyone, but there was no one else making a ’49 Ford, a ’49 Mercury, a ’50 Chevy fastback, or a ’56 Ford Victoria back in this era. What made these cars especially cool was that they all had opening doors, and on some of the cars the doors featured window frames, something no other 1:64 scale car that I had seen had ever done up to that point. Although they were of poor quality and scale-wise were a little too big to co-exist with my Matchboxes and Hot Wheels, I owned a few of these when I was a kid, and back around 2016 or so I made it a point to go online and round up the entire collection, including those I never got back in the day. I’m glad I did, because they are a lot harder to find and a lot more expensive now!

One other casting I remember from Ertl: they were the only ones who made a 1:64 version of the 80‘s Maserati Quattroporte, and as far as I know, they are still the only company that ever made that car in that scale! It wasn’t a great model, but I have it, because there was no other way to get it! Other than these standouts, Ertl’s 1:64 product line in this era was very limited. Years later they would come back to market with several much higher quality die-cast cars and trucks, and I have nothing bad to say about their farm toys, which are nicely detailed, but back in this era, 1:64 die-casts from this maker were few and far between.

SUMMER

And at the end we come to nadir: the bottom of the barrel in die-cast 1:64, the many brands and names (Motor Force, Marz Carz) of the poorest quality cars made by Summer. Designed for sale at drugstores and dime stores for sub $1, as a kid I had very few of these, because they were so poorly made that I didn’t want them at any price. A small handful of them found their way into my collection and amazingly enough I still have a few today; one in particular is a car that, at the time (around 1981 or so) I didn’t think I could get from any other maker: a Ferrari P4.  

One can’t help but feel that the market niche of these awful toys was to fill that left by Tootsietoys when they finally stopped making their iconic little hollow metal cars sometime in the mid 80’s. I once read someone hilariously (and accurately) refer to these as “shutup toys,” designed for sudden purchases by frustrated parents to get their kids to stop whining for at least a few minutes while spending as little as possible. There’s a market for that, though, and we have to remember that these cheap toys are often what happy childhood memories are made of, so while I have no interest in them, I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s people out there who collect Summer die-casts if for no other reason than the memory of those childhood trips to the drug store!

So there’s my thoughts on “off brands,” by which I mean…well, cheap brands. No discussion here of some of the unsual European makes that were very hard to find in the US back in the day, such as Siku or Schuco or Majorette or Norev Mini-Jets, since I wouldn’t classify those as “off brands” in the way I’m using that term here. Note that where ever possible I’ve taken original photos of my own cars for this post, although several of the above pics were stolen from the web, since, other than that, they exist only in my memory!