Quick answer: Jack Odell was the engineer at Lesney Products who, in 1953, scaled a road roller down to fit inside a matchbox so his daughter could take it to school. That single model became the Matchbox 1-75 series. Every Matchbox car ever sold in South Africa traces back to a school rule in 1950s England: toys at Jack Odell’s daughter’s school had to fit inside a matchbox. Odell, a self-taught engineer at the London die-casting firm Lesney Products, machined a miniature Aveling-Barford diesel road roller small enough to comply. Her classmates all wanted one. From One Roller to Seventy-Five Models a Year Lesney put the roller into production in…