Marcel van Cleemput - Telegraph He left to join Mettoy (from "metal toy") in 1954 and soon became chief engineer. Two years later Corgi Toys was established by Playcraft, a sister corporation to Mettoy. Its greatest rival was Dinky Toys, which then had more than 20 years" experience in the die-cast business and was the market leader. But van Cleemput found Dinky's toys "so basic, with just a body shell, a chassis, two axles and four wheels" that he set out to improve on them. Corgi became the first manufacturer to put transparent windows into their scale models, which were billed as "the ones with windows." Corgi made 2.75 million sales in its first year of trading, becoming a serious challenger to Dinky. In 1964 van Cleemput was put in sole charge of Corgi's "Classics Range" - models which are now highly collectable. By the late 1970s, however, Corgi's popularity was waning. The toy market had expanded hugely over the previous two decades, and the company desperately sought advice on how to compete. "A visit to a lady child psychologist revealed that our Swedish Jet Dragster model resembled a phallic symbol and was therefore unsuitable for children," van Cleemput recalled. All these excursions were very costly and of no help whatsoever. As Corgi's fortunes dipped, van Cleemput registered his own company, Acorn Technical Design Services, in 1983, and retrained as a manager. A contract with Mettoy made van Cleemput responsible for all its mould and tool design work. For the next three years van Cleemput was involved with Acorn on numerous projects, including the first cold cure machine to be retailed in Boots, the first laptop computer from Thorn EMI, and a Corner Snooker Table, designed to fit into a limited space. In 1986 he founded another company, Acorn Memories, which sold 3-D artworks . In 1989 van Cleemput produced The Great Book of Corgi, a 500-page history and catalogue of Corgi's toys. A revised edition, The New Great Book of Corgi, was published in 2010. He greatly enjoyed book-signings, which gave him an opportunity to meet the adults who had owned and loved his toys decades before: "And they all say the same thing: 'Thank you very much for giving me such a wonderful childhood."" Marcel van Cleemput met his wife Molly in 1947, and they married three years later. She survives him with their two daughters. Marcel van Cleemput, born May 2 1926, died March 15 2013