Jack Odell and Lesney
Engineering genius Jack Odell, who died last week, wasn’t much for looking back at his East End childhood. Expelled from his council school at 13 he affected to not remember the precise reason, nor even the name of the establishment. His listing in Who’s Who, meanwhile ran to just two lines … and omitted place of birth, date of birth and any personal details.
But the products of the company Jack and childhood pal Leslie Smith founded is seared indelibly into the memories of generations of post-War kids. And their company, Lesney, became, for a few years, an East End institution.
Kicked out of school at 13, John William Odell drifted through a variety of jobs (among them cinema projectionist, van driver and estate agent’s clerk) before World War II came to the rescue. he signed up for the Army and joined the REME, fully indulging his love for engineering and motors. Through five years in the Middle East and Italy he worked repairing and maintaining army fighting vehicles, while displaying early signs of the entrepreneurial flair that would make him a millionaire days before his fortieth birthday. Jack was salting away cash from his meagre private’s pay (15p a day) buying up spares for broken Primus stoves, fixing them, selling them on and amassing £300 by the end of the war.
Engineering and vehicles were his love, and on demob he took a job in a die-casting works in north London. He learned the job inside out but was appalled by the quality of the cast models the firm made. The enterprising Odell bought his own moulds and set up in business. Meanwhile, childhood friend Leslie Smith had set up with another school chum Rodney Smith and pooled their demob money to buy the bombed-out Rifleman pub in Edmonton, for £600. They kitted it out with Government surplus die-casting machinery and christened their firm Lesney Products. ‘Lesney’ from their first names, ‘Products’ because they hadn’t yet decided what to make! Odell joined the firm as the engineering brains and the new outfit would do bits and pieces of work, subcontracting for the bigger firms.
Post-war London was a hard place to do business, with continual shortages of raw materials, labour and finance. Often the machinery stood idle, and so it was in December 1948 that the company ran off miniatures of the vehicles Britons saw around them everyday. Jack got the inspiration when his daughter returned from school complaining her ’show and tell’ session only allowed things which could fit in a matchbox (things were rather more austere in the Britain of 60 years back. The creative brain of Odell lit on the idea of a mini steamroller, in smart red and green, for the girl to take to show her pals. The Matchbox toy was born.
The firm started producing miniatures of the vehicles familiar to Britons from the thousands of building sites which were reconstructing the country. A traction engine, cement mixer, tractor and bulldozer were the first off the production line, and Lesney set about selling them to local shops. Fired by their success, the Smiths decided to pitch the bigger toy stores. They weren’t enthusiastic. The tiny cars were described as ‘Christmas cracker trash’ by one buyer. But what did he know - the kids loved them. Lesney, in fact, had difficulty meeting demand and soon 13 Woolworths stores placed orders. Austerity bit once more though. From 1950 to 1952, during the Korean War, the Government limited the use of zinc to essential purposes, and Lesney made only the tin Jumbo the Elephant toy. The company could and should have gone bust; Rodney Smith was bought out and Jack and Leslie somehow pulled through the lull. The rate of production from the mid fifties was astonishing, with two new models a month being created, the toys selling in 140 countries, and turning over an incredible two million pieces each week in the US. These were cheap and supposedly disposable toys, starting at around 8p (though mint editions of these vehicles are now collectors’ items.
Of course it helped to have the original models to work from, and the tireless Jack would produce scale models from manufacturers’ photos and drawings - a never-ending supply of new pieces. He designed bespoke machinery to spray the little silver headlamps on the cars - everything at Lesney was made by Lesney, and the pair built a thriving factory at Hackney Wick on the banks of the River Lea. At its peak, the firm employed 6000, with Odell remaining on the shop floor, a working engineer. His attention to detail was legendary, on one occasion correcting an engineer because the ’seat’ on the car he was designing wasn’t sufficiently padded! By 1969 the firm had 14 factories. The pair didn’t allow unions and were proud of their strike-free record, but the boom wasn’t to last.
The 1970s saw the UK in recession again, and a flood of cheap imports from the Far East. The new ’superfast’ wheels of competitors such as Hot Wheels made Matchbox toys look old and staid, and the duo’s millions shrunk with the company. Plants were closed and the pair had to go to the City for finance. In July 1982 Lesney went bankrupt (a fate also to befall rivals Dinky and Corgi).
Jack wasn’t quite done though. He’d originally retired from Lesney in 1973, only lured back to help the company out of its hole. Now on his own he set up his own company Lledo (Odell backwards) with some old Matchbox diecasting plant and started making vintage models - it was back to the early Lesney days. He sold up in 1996. After a long fight with Parkinson’s disease, John William Odell (OBE) died on 7 July 2007. Maybe we could construct that Who’s Who entry for him. ‘Jack Odell East End businessman, born 1920 somewhere in the East End, made millions of children happy’.