British boxes general

Yes, a shame -- and how amazing that he kept it safe all these years as a momento of a Binns Road visit and then finally decided to cut it up. Good thing that at least he took a photograph of it first. I assume this is how the covers for some repro boxes are printed as well. I wonder how they were cut out at the factory in an accurate, yet time-saving fashion ...

Another example of poor registering of the black and red print runs below:

I always thought the boxes weren't made by Meccano Liverpool themselves. So says Richardson on page 246 of the GB of DT: 'The boxes were made by specialist box manufacturers.' Or is it that the boxes were made elsewhere, but covered by Meccano Liverpool themselves? Jan Oldenhuis

Hi Jan. No, of course Meccano themselves were no manufacturers of boxes, but they planned, organized and ordered boxes, as part of the overall production output. Kind regards, Jan

Hello all, I have the answer to your questions about this box wraping but I need to do a bit more investiagation on this subject so that my post is comprehensive. Please give me two or three days, this subject is not at the top of my to do list. I am also doing some research about tampoo printing on DINKY TOYS but that will come later.

An improved picture of this box cover. This box cover does not have cutting marks because they were not needed. Several of these sheets were cut with a press the tool of which was made of two pieces of ply-wood. A steel blade of the correct shape to be cut was inserted into one of the ply-woods the small heap of sheets was laid on the other piece. I have seen this been done in the seventies but I have not been able to find a picture of one of these inertial presses. They are probably not used any more as today most of the packing is made of plastic. This very poor picture of the principle of the cutting press may help you to understand. Sorry, I have never been any good at drawing anything. This very sheet may have been sent by the printer to the Meccano factory for approval. One can only think that several such sheets had been send and this one was one too many.Meccano did not make it's boxes, they were not competant and there was probably no room at Binns road for a printing and box assembly shop. According to David Cooke, some of the very rare early boxes were made in Belfast Northen Ireland by Mc Caw, Stevenson & Orr, they were printed with 'Printed in Great Britain'. All later boxes were 'printed in England'. This was probably somewhere in Liverpool or around as transport of hundred of thousands of empty boxes must have been extremely expansive.

Jacques. Many thanks for your research and very interesting explanation in this question. I am attaching an enlarged photo of the assembly line where on the right ladies are busy packing Gift Set boxes in the Meccano factory Liverpool. Jan Oldenhuis 11 July 2021

Two very rare boxes. For export to Japan, the cristal boxes were packed in these card boxes. I have pictures of three of them for both French and British models. There is an other type of overbox for Japan. The label on this box has the japanese importer logo KB and the japanese reference number includes the original Meccano reference 128.

In The Journal no 89 the French 555 Thunderbird box, shown previously by DinkyCollect, with its leader Fuhrer rather than its driver Fahrer is not shown. Interestingly Atlas have reproduced fahrer on their copy.