ROUTEMASTER BUS

There are plenty of toy and model London Routemasters around, but Spot-On’s version is rather special.

Until the 1950s the Dinky range had the market for diecast toys almost to itself. Then, in 1956, Mettoy’s Corgi toys took on Dinky at its own game, and in 1959 Britain’s biggest toy company, Line Brothers (Tri-ang), introduced yet another brand: Spot-On.

The key selling point here was that all the models were to the same scale, 1:42, something that makers of diecast toys had always avoided doing, for obvious reasons. A double-deck bus or big lorry at the same scale as a saloon car would be large, heavy and expensive to make. Dinky and Corgi buses were usually reduced to smaller and more manageable dimensions – but that wasn’t the Spot-On way, and its Routemaster measured nearly eight inches long.

To make such a large model the body had to be cast in two sections, split horizontally. Seats are moulded in cream plastic but, surprisingly, Spot-On didn’t include the cream-coloured strip between the upper and lower decks to be seen on the real vehicle.

This impressive piece came in a sturdy blue box decorated with a graph-paper design, chosen to emphasise the focus on scale. Sadly, it had a brief shelf life: introduced in 1961, it was withdrawn two or three years later.

No doubt the price of 19s 11d (nearly £1) was a factor. When Dinky brought out its own, smaller Routemaster in 1964, it cost 8s 11d – less than half the price. And for most parents that would have been quite enough.