The discreet magic of the Dinky Toys catalogs
03/13/2026
In the late fifties and early sixties, the print world - whether newspapers, gazettes, magazines or advertising - was almost exclusively black and white in text and images, even in the "Yellow Booklet". Not that that bothered me as a child. It was simply normal. There were three exceptions in our educated middle-class household (we read the newspaper "Der Bund" twice a day): The SBB calendar and the large-format cultural magazine "Du", which featured color reproductions of art and the occasional color photograph.
And then there were my small-format Dinky Toys catalogs, which were four-color throughout!
Only recently, when I took these catalogs out of the archive again, did I realize how special these little books were back then: Color throughout. Not that I think I would have been less interested in model cars if these model car brochures had been black and white, but the color brought a lot of emotion into play and promised realism.
But even the beautiful black and white advertisements in the Automobil-Revue had a certain graphic something. And what a promise the new Jaguar 3.4 Litre Mark 2 made: "Windows, independent suspension and innovative steering". Even if the windows were made of Plexiglas, the suspension was actually two movable rigid axles with metal braces and the steering had to be activated by pressing on one side of the vehicle, which tilted towards the inside of the bend contrary to the real driving dynamics - what technical progress in model car construction!
The downside: in the case of the Jaguar, these advances cost almost six weeks' salary (pocket money). But it's an old law that perhaps deserves to be rediscovered: What is not immediately attainable, its aura grows with the wait. And the non-material value of such a model was and still is correspondingly greater. Wonderfully enough, it is also no less than that of my highly detailed, absolutely magnificent 1:12 scale metal model of the Maserati "Birdcage", for example...
Collecting - whether model cars or whatever - is something completely different from the uncontrolled accumulation of objects. It is a small school of life in the field of tension between what is desired and what is possible. And much more besides.
