I recently purchased the A History of Tri-ang and Lines Brothers Ltd, published in 2022 by Kenneth Brown, who had earlier written his history of Meccano Ltd. (Factory of Dreams). Although obviously peripheral to Dinky Toys, the book is interesting reading.
As I have shared before, “Lines Brothers” was an epithet to me as a child, partly because I didn’t like the “Visi-Pac” boxes, 1/42nd scale, and other “innovations” they introduced to Dinky. Mostly, though, it is because Dinky distribution became so spotty in the U.S. from the time Lines acquired Meccano in 1964 until Tri-ang went bust in 1971.
As quoted in the Tri-ang book, Graeme Lines wrote in a letter to a British Consul General in December 1964 that Dinky faced “hair-raising” marketing difficulties in the United States. Elsewhere in the book, we read that Lines Brothers did not like to use wholesalers/distributors to sell its toys, preferring to cut on the middlemen. But in my own experience, to call Lines’ U.S. efforts “half-baked” would be rather charitable. Matchbox (via U.S. distributor Fred Bronner) and Corgi (via U.S. distributor Reeves International) were vastly easier to find in American stores during the 1960s.
At the end of 1960, Meccano’s longtime U.S. distributor, H. Hudson Dobson, closed down. As you can read in my article My Collecting History and Ten Favorite Models, five different regional distributors were then appointed for 1961, and later increased to eight nationwide. These regional distributors did a poor job, probably because Dinky was only a minor sideline for most of them. Eventually, in 1963, Meccano Ltd. contracted with A. C. Gilbert to distribute Dinky Toys in the U.S. But Gilbert wasn’t in good health, and that arrangement only lasted a year.
Meanwhile, in the 1950s H. Hudson Dobson had regularly advertised Dinky Toys in Boys Life (the official magazine of the U.S. Boy Scouts) and other publications — in the lead-up to Christmastime, even in general magazines such as the Saturday Evening Post. Lines Brothers advertising was much rarer, but one ad did appear in Boys Life for November 1965. It took up about 1 1/2 pages. The right-hand page had color drawings of some Dinky Toys, while the left-hand page had a black-and-white coupon and a list of stockists.
The first copy of this ad I obtained listed only East Coast dealers. I reasoned that Boys Life must, like most large-circulation magazines of the time, have been published in both an Eastern edition and a Western one. Eventually, I did obtain the latter from eBay, though not without having earlier purchased a copy that just happened to be torn and defaced on the two relevant pages!
I am sharing both copies of the list. Even so, this “partial” list still has omissions. (I don’t see Illinois anywhere, for example.) In the California list, I see some shops I don’t remember, while others I recall having Dinky Toys are not listed. Maybe their stocks had come from H. Hudson Dobson or its interim successors and they were not doing business with Lines Brothers, or not yet by the time this ad appeared.
If one can believe this list, the most reliable source of Dinky Toys nationally was J. J. Newberry, a chain of “variety” stores similar to Woolworth’s. Unfortunately, there were none near my home, so I can neither confirm nor deny it!