Dragon Data was a toy company’s attempt to build a home computer, and for a while it looked as though it might work. Mettoy, the maker of Corgi die-cast cars, launched the Dragon 32 in August 1982 with twice the memory of the 16K ZX Spectrum. Computer & Video Games thought that “with a toy company behind it, Wales’ very own Dragon 32 microcomputer should be a games-player’s machine. It is!” Less than two years later a receiver was walking through a warehouse at Port Talbot that held, by one estimate, £4 million to £6 million of unsold Dragons.
In between, the company changed owners, managing directors and backers, launched the Dragon 64, and announced machines it never shipped. When it closed, the Dragon went to Spain.
Fast facts
- Founded: 1982, as a subsidiary of Mettoy; independent from November 1982.
- Addresses: Queensway, Swansea Industrial Estate, Swansea, in 1982; Kenfig Industrial Estate, Margam, Port Talbot, by autumn 1983.
- Managing directors: Tony Clarke, then Brian Moore, on secondment from GEC, from late 1983.
- Main shareholders: Prutech (the Prudential’s investment arm), the Welsh Development Agency and Mettoy.
- Products: Dragon 32 (1982), Dragon 64 (1983), and games and programs on cartridge and cassette.
- Closed: receivership, June 1984. Its assets and the rights to the Dragon went to Eurohard of Spain.
A toy company’s computer
The Dragon was the idea of Tony Clarke, Mettoy’s financial director and a former electrical engineer. Tim Danton’s history of the machine says Clarke bought an Apple II in 1980 and decided that his company could offer better value. Mettoy already had factories and knew how to sell to children. Clarke persuaded the board to pay PA Technology in Cambridge to design the machine, and PA based it on Tandy’s Color Computer.
The Dragon 32 went on sale in August 1982 at £199.50, sold through high-street shops such as Boots and Dixons. Your Computer’s launch report named the company as Dragon Data and noted that it “is part of the Mettoy group”, with final assembly in Swansea. Every Dragon advertisement in Computer & Video Games from September to December 1982 gives the address as Queensway, Swansea Industrial Estate, and ends with the same line of small print: “A member of the Mettoy Group of Companies.” The October advertisement was written to husbands: if your wife wants to know more, “take her to see the Dragon 32”. It closed by apologising to “our many lady readers” and suggesting they read the advertisement to their husbands. In 1984 Personal Computer News called one early Dragon Data advertisement “grossly sexist”.
Mettoy underestimated its own success. Danton reports that it had budgeted to sell 10,000 machines in 1982 and built more than 30,000. C&VG‘s November 1982 buyers’ guide liked the typewriter keyboard and the nine colours, but found the 32-by-16 text display looked “rather twee”, and the software so far “unimpressive”.
Independence
The toy business was failing. Danton writes that Mettoy had lost almost £12 million between 1980 and 1982, and that in November 1982 it sold the Dragon project to a consortium for £900,000, keeping an 18.61% stake. Prutech, the high-technology investment arm of the Prudential, held 40.74% and the Welsh Development Agency 22.12%. Your Computer’s 1988 summary puts it the same way: Dragon Data, “established originally as a Mettoy subsidiary, bought the machines and set up in Wales as an independent company.”
Clarke stayed on as managing director and promised a disk system, business software and new machines. By September 1983 Dragon Data’s address in Dragon User was the Kenfig Industrial Estate at Margam, Port Talbot, and the company had formed a joint venture with Tano Corporation of New Orleans to build and sell the Dragon 64 in the United States.
Rescue and decline
Sales fell short in the summer of 1983. In October Dragon User reported a cash injection from the shareholders to cure the company’s “summer sickness”, and that Clarke was stepping down, with a senior GEC executive coming in on temporary secondment. Danton puts the injection at £2.5 million. The new managing director was Brian Moore, formerly deputy managing director of a GEC subsidiary. Prutech was also a shareholder in GEC. Late in 1983 Mettoy itself went into receivership. Dragon User reported that Moore received the news with regret, and that Dragon Data was an independent company.
The Dragon 64 reached British shops at the end of 1983. In early 1984 GEC McMichael took over UK sales and marketing and advertised the “GEC Dragon 64”. Dragon Data announced a business machine, the Dragon Professional, and a Touchmaster graphics tablet. Your Computer later added that it had promised an MSX-standard machine, “which did not” appear.
Dragon Data’s software
Dragon Data also published programs for its machines. At launch its cartridge games, including Berserk, Cosmic Invaders and Meteoroids, cost £19.95 each and the Pac-Man variant Ghost Attack £24.95; Your Computer complained that “eight programs could cost you as much as the computer”. Cheaper cassettes followed, and the reviews were mixed. In March 1984 Dragon User’s reviewer spent much of a review of the graphic adventure White Crystal on its box:
Dragon Data has produced the worst example of over-packaging I have encountered. The single cassette is contained in a full-sized video-cassette box, more than nine inches in size, and over one and a half inches thick.
The game cost £12.95, “which is rather excessive” for a program written in BASIC. The next month Big K reviewed Dragon Data’s £7.95 Starfighter, a Defender-style shooter: “Like a lot of Dragon software, it’s a compromise. The ingredients for a great game are there but none is fully exploited.”
Receivership
Dragon Data called in the receivers at the beginning of June 1984, “following the continuing difficulties of establishing profitable trading”, as Dragon User reported. It happened, Personal Computer News noted, at the end of the week in which the company had shown off its new products.
PCN’s report of 16 June gives the scale of it. The receiver, Robert Ellis of the accountants Touche Ross, found thousands of Dragons piled up in the warehouse, “with a retail value estimated at between £4 and £6 million”. One of his first acts was to make 81 of the company’s 152 staff redundant; at the pre-Christmas production peak it had employed 270. Several companies, “including Tandy”, were interested in buying some or all of it. Moore was hopeful: “It is almost certain that somehow, somewhere, there is someone interested in providing 200,000 Dragon owners with continuing support.”
That owner count was Moore’s. Your Computer, looking back in 1988, put sales “apparently approaching 100,000” and judged that of all the machines that “broke their companies’ backs”, the Dragon 32 “was probably closest to being an outright success”.
Eurohard and the Spanish Dragons
The buyer was Eurohard SA, a new Spanish company. Dragon User reported in October 1984 that it had acquired Dragon Data’s assets “lock, stock and barrel”, in Moore’s words, was believed to have paid £1 million, and was moving production to a plant at Cáceres. Its president, Eduardo Merigo, told the magazine in January 1985 that production had started in November, and he planned enhanced models, an MSX machine and a television series to make the Dragon Spain’s educational computer. Lydon Davies, one of the few Dragon Data staff to follow the machine, told Danton that Eurohard “didn’t appear to have any real money either”.
Eurohard owned the Dragon name from then on: until its last issue, Dragon User’s masthead said that “Dragon and its logo are trademarks of Eurohard Ltd”. The company’s end is less well recorded. Your Computer reported in 1988 that it had produced a 128K Dragon of which “little has been heard”. A Spanish reader wrote to Dragon User in December 1987 that the Cáceres factory had shut that May. The Dragon 32 entry follows the Spanish years in more detail.
Sources
- Your Computer, July 1982, p. 17: launch news naming Dragon Data as part of the Mettoy group, with assembly in Swansea. August 1982, pp. 20–22: Tim Hartnell’s review, with the cartridge prices.
- Computer & Video Games, issue 11, September 1982, p. 31; issue 12, October 1982, p. 23; issue 13, November 1982, p. 23; issue 14, December 1982, p. 55: Dragon 32 advertisements with the Swansea address and “A member of the Mettoy Group of Companies”; the October advertisement is the one addressed to husbands. Issue 13, November 1982, pp. 86–87: buyers’ guide (“With a toy company behind it…”; “Dragon Data is a subsidiary of Mettoy”; nine colours; the “twee” display; “unimpressive” software).
- Dragon User, September 1983, p. 13: Dragon Data at the Kenfig Industrial Estate, Margam, Port Talbot. September 1983, p. 19: the Tano joint venture. October 1983, p. 5: the cash injection and Tony Clarke stepping down. December 1983, pp. 3, 11, 34: Brian Moore as managing director, and his reaction to Mettoy’s receivership. March 1984, p. 14: review of White Crystal. May 1984, pp. 3, 30–31: GEC McMichael and Brian Moore’s secondment. July 1984, p. 3: the receivership. October 1984, p. 8: Eurohard’s purchase and the Cáceres plant. January 1985, pp. 19–20: interview with Eduardo Merigo. December 1987, p. 3: reader’s letter on Eurohard’s factory. Masthead, 1986–1989: “Dragon and its logo are trademarks of Eurohard Ltd”.
- Big K, issue 1, April 1984, p. 30: review of Starfighter.
- Personal Computer News, 16 June 1984, p. 4, “Monitor” news by Ralph Bancroft: the receivership, the unsold stock, the redundancies, Tandy’s interest and Brian Moore’s comments. The same issue’s letters page: “grossly sexist” early Dragon Data advertising.
- Your Computer, February 1988, pp. 67–68, “Ghosts in the machine”: the Dragon’s business history, the unshipped MSX machine, estimated sales, and Eurohard’s 128K Dragon.
- Tim Danton, The Computers That Made Britain (Raspberry Pi Press, 2021), pp. 142–150: Tony Clarke and the origin of the project, PA Technology, high-street distribution, production figures, Mettoy’s losses, the November 1982 sale and shareholdings, the £2.5 million injection, Brian Moore, and Lydon Davies on Eurohard.