Editing Matchbox (brand) (section)

===Competition and crisis===
The main focus at Matchbox continued to be their smaller cars.  Other brands, including [[Husky (toy company)|Husky]]/[[Corgi Junior]], Budgie, and Cigar Box, attempted to compete with Matchbox, but none were particularly successful until American toy giant [[Mattel]] introduced the revolutionary low-friction "racing" wheels on its [[Hot Wheels]] line of cars.  These models, although less true to scale and often featuring fantasy vehicles, were attractive, painted in bright metallic colours and fitted with racing-style "mag" wheels and slick tyres, and were marketed aggressively and with numerous accessory products, such as race track sets and the like. The Hot Wheels line often featured models that were decidedly American. In 1969, a second competitor based in the US, [[Johnny Lightning]], entered the market, and the bottom effectively fell out of Lesney's US sales. At the same time, the other major market (the UK) was also under attack by competitors.<ref name=Dana2004 />

Lesney's response to this was relatively quick – but not quick enough to avoid major financial worries – by creating the ''Superfast'' line.<ref name=Dana2004 /> This was effectively a transformation of the 1969 line to include low-friction wheels (at first narrow, since the company needed time to retool the series to accommodate wide tyres), often accompanied with new colours.  The result was, at first, a strange but interesting line of fast-wheeling cars, trucks, and trailers, basically complete in 1970.  Racing track sets and the like were also released to allow children to race their cars.  Starting in 1970 and particularly in 1971, new models appeared with wider tyres, and older models (including trucks still in the line) were retooled to fit slicks. The ''King Size'' range was similarly updated, including a division into ''Super Kings'' (mostly trucks, but also with mag wheels) and ''Speed Kings'' (cars).  A short-lived series of rechargeable electric cars, called ''Scorpions'', was released as well, to compete with similar products from Hot Wheels (Sizzlers) and Corgi (ElectroRockets).

By the mid-1970s, Matchbox was again a force on the world market, having completed the transition and having even updated its line to include some fantasy vehicles.  The ''1-75'' series was also amended to include the Rola-Matics (featuring mechanical parts that moved when the vehicle was moved) and Streakers, the latter an attempt to compete with Hot Wheels' newest innovation, tampo-printing on the vehicle itself.