"National" Petrol Promotion

[Idris]

As a result of moving house earlier this year, I have finally managed to reunite all three parts of my collection, with the result that I am rediscovering various long-forgotten gems.
On opening a box over the weekend I came across this. It is a cardboard display designed to sit on top of a petrol pump and formed part of a promotion by Jet in the UK in the early 1970s: for every two gallons of petrol purchased, you were given a voucher and then eigth vouchers could be redeemed for one Matchbox car. This was given to me all those years ago by a school friend whose father actually ran a Jet garage.
It is interesting to note the Dodge Charger is depicted in blue. (Yet another example of preproduction colours being used in artwork?)

[Johnny Pimp]

Wow, that's a fantastic piece of memorabilia!

Aside from the unusual Dodge Charger, the models are all 1970 release colours. There is a blue pre-production model with white base on Christian's site, although I'm not sure that would have been available to the artist, as the absence of any trademarks suggests it wasn't produced in-house.

I wonder if the charger colour was changed to contrast with the red Road Dragster?

[tjlglass]

Wow Hugh never seen these before.

[matchboxkiwi]

Yeah, there great. Thanks for showing.

Cheers Steve
Matchboxkiwi

[SMS88]

Wonderful to see these - there were no Jet stations where I grew up but we did have Shell stations and I do remember the Corgi Juniors Whizzwheels launch artwork for the same sort of models for vouchers featuring a yellow Mercedes 280SL

[Idris]

...the absence of any trademarks suggests it wasn't produced in-house.

Well spotted! I've double-checked and there's nothing like that anywhere on it. Not only that, nut I now notice that there's no capitalisation of either matchbox or superfast and neither are there quotation marks around the word matchbox. On that basis, I think we can safely assume that this artwork was not produced by Lesnay (and, presumably, not even vetted by them either).

[matchbox360]

That's a brilliant display, Idris, thanks for sharing!

The 2 foreground models are really well rendered in that 'extreme perspective' style used on the '71 Carry Cases. The Road Dragster looks positively mouth-watering! As for the lack of capitalisation/quotation marks, I think you're right.. it seems like the artwork wasn't officially sanctioned by Lesney.

Keep up the 'rediscovering'

Cheers,
Ken

[Johnny Pimp]

Ha-ha! I've just checked out the small print at the bottom to see how much you had to spend to get a free car.

Pre-1973 oil crisis it would have cost around £5.50 for 16 gallons but today you'd be looking at nearer £100!

[Idris]

I have now found a photograph of one of the vouchers:

[GHOSTHUNTER]

Now that is some rare piece of ephemera and what a nice surprise to see my favourite make of car!

Thank's for showing that Hugh.

GHOSTHUNTER.