Are Matchbox and/or Hot Wheels vehicles really HO Scale? Many are marked 1:87 scale but they seem larger than the other vehicles that come with Bachmann and Life-Like sets.
If they are not really HO Scale (even though they say they are 1:87 scale), which company makes vehicles that are truer to HO Scale? We don’t want to spend money buying vehicles that aren’t going to look right on our layout.
Can anyone help us sort this out? Thanks!
I’m not sure if either of them are truely HO or not but try searching through the Walther’s Website:
They have a great selection of proper scale vehicles of many different eras.
Matchbox does NOT make any HO scale vehicles and Hot Wheels makes a very small amount. The ones you regularly see in stores are more then likely 1/64 scale.
This sight might br of interest:
I think with Matchbox the vehicle size is made to fit in a “matchbox” / size of the packaging. I have found some delivery trucks that said on their bottom that they were 1:84 or 1:85 and that was close enough for me but then other cars are way too big.
I really myself dont care much about the vehicle’s scale because, it is only a for-play town, not a real serious thing. I mean, my commercial airliners by Schabak are even smaller than my Matchbox toys, but I still include them in it. Largely because a 1/64 model airplane would be much over the monetary limit for me to buy it!
Anyways, Matchbox is mostly 1/64.
Matchbox, Johnny Lightning and Hot Wheels were made for their own market. They were never intended to match up with the HO scale model trains. Most people use them for the fact they can be found locally while walking thru a store. If you want to get prototypical you should look in a train catalog. Another thing is that the catalogs are locale to their market, IE, English, Asian, Us and so on.
On a side note, If I had all the MatchBox and Hot Wheels I lost over the years, I would need a dumptruck to hold them all. As the song says “I drove 100,000 miles on my knees”
Slot car HO (which includes most Matchbox, etc) is 1:64.
NMRA HO is 1:87
Dave
Most Hot Wheels are S scale. Matchbox does not seem to be any particular scale that’s equivalent to trains.
I suspect most vehicles in the Matchbox and Hot Wheels lines are designed to fit the packaging, with scale fidelity (at best) a secondary concern. A small sports car can be as big as a cement mixer in the same line. And most are too big for HO. However, some may be close enough. It’s probably best to look at each car individually.
When I had Matchbox cars as a kid, there did seem to be some attention to detail. The wheels had realistic looking tires. But at a certain point, Matchbox began to use wheels similar to those on Hot Wheels, which appeared to be designed for performance on the Hot Wheels racing tracks, and in any case looked too sporty to be realistic. In fact, Hot Wheels cars either were modeled after hot rods, funny cars, and “concept cars”, with an eye towards what looked “cool” rather than towards realism.
I started collecting Matchbox back in the late 1950s when most of the prototypes were British. I remember a “Morris Minor” that was very close to HO size but there clearly was no one scale for their stuff. They even had a steam locomotive in their line, and a non railroad steam engine, and a Rushton Bucyrus shovel. All metal and very nicely painted. When I see Matchbox now I can’t believe the decrease in quality.
Dave Nelson
If you are going to be browsing the toy car section of a store … tuck a LP (Little Person) of your scale with you in your shirt pocket. Hold up the figure next to the vehicle you are looking at. You will get an immediate answer if the vehicle will work or not.
Not so sure about the “many are marked 1:87 scale” part of the statement above. I have not seen many Matchbox or Hot wheels vehicles marked 1:87 scale, and they usually are not 1:87 scale.
Got some concrete examples?
One brand of vehicles sometimes found in the toy aisles of big box stores that actually are 1:87 scale is the fresh cherries type of vehicles. Often mostly sports cars, a bit flashy for a normal scene near the tracks, but at least the right scale.
Quite a few. Have a look at MB Klein (http://modeltrainstuff.com) and Walthers (http://www.walthers.com), in the H0 scale vehicles section to get some ideas about some brands.
Walthers apparently list 2296 product variations in stock in the H0 scale vehicles section (http://www.walthers.com/exec/search?category=Vehicles&scale=H&manu=&item=&keywords=&words=restrict&instock=Y&split=300&Submit=Search)
What would “look right” on your layout depends on what era and location your layout is supposed to represent.
Aren’t usually a whole lot of tractors in the middle of a city, or a lot of flashy open top sports cars in a small farming community, and
Well, now that I’ve taken a very close look at the vehicles (Hot Wheels and Matchbox) that I have, I can’t find a single one that says it is 1:87 scale…although I was sure that that’s what I had read. Guess my mind was playing tricks on me.
I did find some sports cars and a VW van with a camping trailer that say 1:87 scale on the package. However, these are smaller than the cars that came with the HO Scale Trailer Train Auto Loader cars that we have.
They are also much smaller than the pick-up trucks that came with some Life-Like sets that we have (campground, farm, etc.)
I realize that not all cars are the same size in real life, but the difference between 2 sedans, one marked 1:87 scale and one from Life-Like, is so different that they do not look right together.
Perhaps my problem is that I have some of the Life-Like and other older plastic cars? Were they ever supposed to be 1:87 scale?
I have a couple of the old Lindberg HO vehicle kits, that seem to measure out fairly close to what they should be, so I use them as comparisons. I also have a couple old Varney and Life-Like cars that seem a bit small. My son had a fair collection of Matchbox, Hotwheels, and others, and some of them match up pretty well with the Lindberg, some are larger and wider, some are obviously smaller. I;ve purchased some of the Matchbox and other industrial type equiopment, like garbage trucks, fork lifts, and as long as a scale figure looks right along side it, I accept it regardless of what a scale rule says. Right now, I kind of figure some of the custom hot rod cars and imagineered ones would look good at a local restaraunt for a Friday afternoon type car show, which is fairly common around here.
I personally think these cars are built to a particular wheel base and tread specification, plus TLAR, rather than any particular exact scale. They could run from 1/64 to maybe 1/96 scale. For our purposes, it’s probably a matter of if it looks like it fits, its close enough to 1.87 as to not matter.
Then don’t put them close together - use the bigger one in the foreground and the smaller one in the background.
If you want to see which one is closest to scale, just measure it and multiply by 87.1, then google the size of the real car and compare with the result of your calculation.
Smile,
Stein
No, Hot Wheels and Matchbox never were HO, and made no claims to be HO. The automobiles turn out to be S-scale, or close enough. You can use them on an HO layout but they will look big. Put them in the foreground and not to close to the trains and it will look OK. They are too big to use as loads for the auto rack cars, they just don’t fit.
There was a push in the toy industry a few years ago to introduce a line of 1:87 vehicles. Fresh Cherries was the brand name. I picked up a nice 53 Caddy convertible, a 56 Chevy sedan, a VW beetle, a Type 356 Porshe, and a Ford pickup. Then Hot Wheels got into it, issued a few items marked 1:87. I got 34 Ford hot rod and a Hudson Hornet street rod. The Hot Wheels were not as nicely made as the Fresh Cherries. For a while WalMart was carrying them, but I haven’t seen any in WalMart lately.
The trucks and construction equipment, road graders and front end loaders, can work out. The prototypes are made in all sizes from small enough for homeowners to big enough for Interstate Highway construction. The toy ones will scale out as the larger prototypes in HO but nothing wrong with that.
About 4 years ago Hot Wheels did attempt to make HO Scale vehicles which I would purchase and collect from Wal Mart. I purchased a total of 21 before they were discontinued. Here is a post of one of them from the Facebook Group HO Scale Vehicles n Model Railroad.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=495508070490073&set=o.435589963135582&type=1&theater
JohnnyReb, like you if I had back all the cars … Heck, I even had a full set of the Matchbox King Size that my mother gave away when I went to college. Those things are worth something if you can find them now in good shape.
Also, for anyone looking for farm equipment, a good place to try is Tractor Supply or a similar local farm supplier. They often have racks of pretty good looking farm equipment painted for most of the major builders from different eras. Not exactly to scale, but since tractors come in so many sizes, unless someone is real knowledgeable about Farmall vs Allis, no one will notice. Every layout in the 50s/60s needs a Ford 8n on the farm.
Since this thread is being revived my big question is why you can buy a Hot Wheels for $1-2.00 but an HO scale vehicle without much more detail is $5-10.00 or more?