Golden Years of Matchbox Art

In 1973 an exciting new range of ‘pocket money’ model kits was launched in the UK, much to the delight of schoolboys up and down the country.  These Matchbox kits were cheap, simple to make and moulded in two or three different coloured plastics so that the younger modellers didn’t even need to paint them.  The most memorable thing about them however, wasn’t the multi-coloured plastic or the slightly eccentric choice of subjects, it was the dynamic and action packed box-art, painted almost exclusively by Roy Huxley.

Roy’s style was part comic book and part aerospace illustration which perfectly captured the imagination (and the pocket money), of thousands of schoolboys around the world. As the boys grew, so did the kits, with ever bigger and more ambitious projects including four engined bombers and ultimately a huge 1/72 corvette, HMS Bluebell.

Now nearly 50 years after those first kits were created and the first bits of artboard painted, this book brings together Roy’s exciting paintings for the very first time. Remarkably, although many of the original paintings were lost over the years, Roy managed to keep a very comprehensive transparency archive of his work, allowing us to reproduce these classic pieces of box-art in the vibrant colours last seen in the 1970s.

Featuring over 100 large paintings and many more smaller illustrations, this book is a long overdue journey down memory lane, not just for those long lost schoolboys but also for any fan of military art.