Gerry Anderson remembers visiting the Binns Road factory and being told that Dinky had market research showing children preferred the bright colours (Simon Archer/Marcus Hearn, 2002). From 1975, a new blue version of Thunderbird 2 was released, along with the green Eagle. The original Dinky Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet and Joe 90 models were mostly correctly coloured, but the models from UFO released in 1971 onwards were inaccurate green. Most of the British toys were made by the Meccano factory in Binns Road, Liverpool, built in 1914. Airfix acquired the Meccano and Dinky companies. While licensing had made the toys profitable again, the Lines Brothers parent company collapsed in 1971. The interceptor and Shado Mobile from UFO were the top selling Dinky toys in the early 1970s. In 1965, Dinky agreed a licensing deal with Gerry Anderson, producing Thunderbird 2 from Thunderbirds in 1967, and, even more popular, three vehicles from Captain Scarlet in 1968. In 1964, suffering heavy losses, the company was sold to Lines Brothers, which sold off the Hornby railway business. By the start of the 1960s, children were moving on to rival toys from Lego and, for older children, radios and pop records. Competition was other manufacturers such as Corgi, Matchbox and Mattel forced increasing accuracy, including plastic windows, working suspension and opening doors. The Dinky brand was known for quality and range. Dinky was one of the pioneers of the die-cast process, in which a zinc-alloy is poured into a mould. Parent company Meccano had three hugely successful toy lines: the Meccano construction system (1901), Hornby Trains (1920), and Dinky Toys, which started in the 1930s making die-cast metal cars as accessories for Hornby Trains.
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