Corgi Toys - Decline and Demise

Decline and Demise

There were many reasons for the decline of Corgi Toys, and indeed the British toy car industry; not least the changes in tastes of youngsters, the spiralling cost of developing new features that would capture the imagination, and the emergence of computer games consoles. After the phenomenal success of the range during the late 1950s and 1960s, sales remained fairly static during the early 1970s, but by the end of the decade the models had become less innovative, and sales slumped continually into the 1980s. The increasing costs of UK based production and decreasing sales revenue meant that there was not the funds available to develop the ingenious toys of the past, and the models now sold in their thousands rather than in the millions that they achieved during their heyday. The end finally came in 1983, when Corgi Toys were forced to call in the Official Receiver after years of staving off the inevitable, just three years after the demise of their greatest rival Dinky Toys. An era of British toy manufacturing had passed into history.