Throwback Thursday! The Cars of My Childhood, Pt. 2: A Literal Pile of Majorette

This is the second edition of my Throwback Thursday series. This time I’ll focus on one brand that dominated my toy box as a child: Majorette!

While Matchbox and Hot Wheels likely owned controlling stock in the $1 car market in the late 1980s, Majorette was the brand that I was actually much more familiar with. The main reason was due to them being carried at our local CVS pharmacies. With my mom having to go quite often due to a number of prescriptions (she’s had multiple sclerosis since before I was born), she’d often buy me a car or two whenever we went. Seriously, the brand probably outnumbered HW and MBX 3:1 in our house. What I’m going to show here are the ones that survived better than others. Some met their fate with the business end of a hammer…

To me, Majorette was actually the better of the three brands at the time. Most were metal/metal, and almost all had spring suspension and some sort of moving part.

I really liked how with the trucks they often tooled three bases to keep using the bodies. Castings like the Toyota pickup and the Jeep Cherokee would have a “normal” height base, a 4×4 base and eventually the Super Rockers monster trucks.

Toyota Pick Up, “Gladiator”! These would often lose the mirrors haha
This Jeep Cherokee was easily a favorite of mine. Loved the green with flames!
Toyota Land Cruiser
Chevy Depanneuse. Modified Blazer. Had a few versions, including with tow truck arms, and a military one with a turret gun.

The Super Rockers are, IMO, the best of all the monster trucks that the brands were doing at the time, like Matchbox and Road Champs. They were quite robust where the ones I had from the brands easily broke on me. Plus like many of the normal vehicles, these had the spring suspension, making them that much more interactive.

Super Rockers Toyotas
Super Rockers Jeep Cherokee
Super Rockers Depanneuse
Monster trucks doing what they do best.

The cars were all over the place for me, though my favorites were always the ones with the wide/fat wheels, I believe called “turbo wheels”. They were always on the sports cars. Ferrari 288 GTO, Mustang SVO, Pontiac Fiero racer, Lamborghini Countach, Corvette C4, Firebird Trans Am, Porsche Turbo. Not sure why they were just my favorite things at the time, despite seemingly frowned upon nowadays by collectors.

Firebird Trans Am and Corvette. I often brought that blue Corvette with me whenever I went to my one aunt and uncle’s place. I like to think me bringing it as often as I did prompted him to buy an actual 1984 Corvette later down the line, as it was also blue, haha
Porsche Turbo, one of the VERY few plastic base Majorette cars I had.
I forget how the one on the right got the cracked windshield, but I often used it in mimicking crashes and junk yards.
I assume this Corvette was mildly inspired by Dale Earnhardt’s race cars. Another favorite!
Chevy Caprice police cars and a taxi. Loved the opening doors on these. My uncle (different than the one mentioned above) had a Caprice from this era when I was a kid, I remember always bringing it up to him that I had a car like his.
Turbo T-Bird! In all honesty I don’t recall any other brand doing deco on the underside of an opening hood like this.

So, another deep glimpse into how I became a collector today. A number of years ago I came across a random thrift store and stopped on a whim. Guy had a box of old diecast cars, mostly mint and had a BUNCH of Majorette from this era in it. Asked how much he wanted, was only like $15. Told him I’d be right back and bought the box almost strictly for the Majorette cars that were in there. I think there were 15 or so of just that brand that I kept, so it was WELL worth the price. Finding that box really kicked the nostalgia for me, and I’ve been looking for a lot of these older cars ever since. Not constantly, but once in a while. Sometimes I find a few gems, some I’ll eventually feature. Hope you enjoyed some nice play-worn cars, maybe kicking some nostalgia for some of you too!

Search for some vintage Majorette releases on eBay!

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