From Tiny Fascinations to Big Passions:
My Journey into Collecting Miniature Vehicle Models

When I began attending school, the walk to the school building required passing by a Wonder Bread Bakery, and a Ford Automobile Dealership. The bakery provided a feast for the nostrils, and the dealership a feast for the eyes. My father and my uncle each had a car in our home driveway, and neighbors had cars, but passing the Ford store, going to and coming from school every day, likely had a greater influence on what eventually became a lifelong affinity to cars.

To add to the fascination, the discovery soon thereafter that a little miniature '55 Ford could be had "free" inside boxes of certain Post Cereals! Actually, though unknown to this young child at that time, the F&F Mold and Die Works had produced miniature Ford replicas since 1949. As time went on, I learned that various Ford and Mercury replicas were produced into 1969.

The magic for me however, was seeing the various 1955 Ford body styles and colors through the showroom windows, while knowing that one or another might be found in a cereal box, duplicating the real ones in the showroom.

Enter reality. "Free" does not mean the same thing to a child, as it means to a parent who pays for the "free' item. Thus it was many years later that I was able to acquire my '55 Fords: Tudor, Crown Victoria, Country Sedan, Sunliner, and Thunderbird. They were molded in various colors, though I ended up with not much variety as the ones I found were similar in color.

By today's standards they are most certainly not the most accurate representations of the actual vehicles, but in the eyes of a child in 1955, they were more than good enough...and, we could get one in a cereal box! At that time in my life I had no awareness nor knowledge of promotional scale models or plastic model kits. My only knowledge - ignorant bliss - was that one Ford agency, and was gained vicariously by looking through the windows.

I never aspired to collect others of the F&F series throughout the years, once I became aware of their existence, because that earliest memory of a neighborhood car dealership, and the same toy cars being available in a cereal box, combined for an indelible nostalgic memory sufficient to last a lifetime. It was later, at approximately age eleven that I discovered plastic model cars, and at that point it seems that I was driven to begin a lifelong hobby of building and collecting scale model vehicles; yet those F&F '55 Fords, in spite of being comparatively crude, still hold a special place in my heart and in my collection.

Jim Amado
7/16/2024

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page updated 7/16/2024