Here it is, for you enjoyment, the entire Sneak Peek Presentation from the Hot Wheels Team, presented at the 2018 Hot Wheels Nationals Finale. Photos coming later. Enjoy.
#tranquilcollecting
#tranquilcollecting
Here it is, for you enjoyment, the entire Sneak Peek Presentation from the Hot Wheels Team, presented at the 2018 Hot Wheels Nationals Finale. Photos coming later. Enjoy.
Hotwheels- lets keep all of the good stuff behind a website that is a pain to access for people overseas. Atleast sell them in hobby stores.
Yes! Screw you Mattel, and the distribution channels you’re riding on!!!
True they even struggle to ship cars to canada thats why i dont buy anything
Because i live in east europe and shipping costs a arm and aleg
Aaaand…. more JDM- German Big 3 stuff. Great…Thanks Hotten Wheelerg San!!!
I noticed throughout most of the presentation that the audience wasn’t all that excited about anything. Very few applause and claps for even the most anticipated and surprising cars. It was kinda of a letdown since I like the audience getting into it and enjoying the show. There were some cars, just to name a few such as the Super Honda Civic EF, Nissan Skyline R32, the ’17 Audi RS6 Avant, etc. that should’ve got a huge reaction but didn’t. Maybe it’s because of how disappointing the distribution is at Mattel and they’re probably thinking that they won’t be able to find most of these cars in stores to begin with.
I wasn’t there, so I could be totally wrong, but it seemed like the things that got the most excitement out of the crowd was American muscle and all the pointless “Original 16” and throwback muscle stuff. This would suggest to me that the bulk of the crowd for an event like this is the old guard of more traditionalist collectors. I’d wager that that’s the reason that JDM and Euro stuff barely got a reaction. Sounds to me like some new blood needs to attend!
But what about the gatekeeping? I’m 20, and my tastes run hard-counter to these guys’ taste. I like GT3, GTE, modern machinery just as much as the old cars, if not slightly more, and it’s not like there’s a whole lot of young adults who are in to this sort of stuff that can sway opinion so that the next sELECTIONs at least have the choices coming from the 21st century.
Thing is, the baseline is that they’re still playthings for kids, so a stigma (childish, immature) still exists, but the problem is that there’s so much expected for a 1-dollar toy, and collecting these ain’t cheap in the long run.
Somehow, you have to market the licensed cars differently to generics, while still appealing to a penny-pinching market that would like a model car but can’t spend any more than $10 per piece, and must reflect general enthusiast tastes besides. One hypercar, one supercar, one performance sedan/crossover, one trophy truck, one classic racer, one modified street car, one stock street car.
There’s definitely a middle ground for “beautiful, accurate collectibles you can play”, and we’ve seen how well a mainline car can look against a Kyosho and TLV, but there’s still the kids slant. It’s still the primary target. The goal is to expand the “cheap collector” market, the ones that can buy this car and think: “wow, just $5!” or “wow, just $1!” and it would at home both in a glass case or during a play-date.
And send it to everywhere that can sell it for $1! On drugstores, big malls, hobby centers, convenience stores. Even just 2 or 3 cases worth in a 7-Eleven will do wonders. Stock one every week, that should do it.
Now this is all just bluster on my part, frankly this should be sent to the HW Design team, but I do think if we let our voices heard well enough, we will get what we want. But I want the old guard to do more too, to say more, to demand a few more modern metal, something slightly more relatable, as well as bringing some (not all) collectors-only models down to the mainline. We tell them to send more cases, and more consistently, with a 60/40 split favoring licensed.
Next convention spread the word. There ought to be more of these brilliant cars. Nothing less than fresh stock, fresh castings, one where there’s something new every day but enough that three examples can be seen in the pegs for at least 2 months.
Oh, and erase scalpers. These people spoil the fun and must be discarded.
As a member of the “old guard”, here’s some vehicles I’d like to see:
1. More Koeniggseggs
2. early ’70s Opel GT
3. ’84 Audi Quattro
4. Subaru SVX
5. Nissan R390
6. 2019 RAM Pickup–saw one in the metal the other day.
7. ANY Pagani
8. early ’70s Nissan Cedric–preferably a wagon
9. Lotus Elan roadster
A good design is a good design regardless of where it’s from or when. And Mattel, PLEASE get the Ferrari license back!!
That’s exactly what I thought when I saw the presentation but I was afraid the “fans” would get offended if I said anything. But I think I’ll say it anyway.
From what I saw, the American cars (especially the older ones) got most of the applause, the JDM got a few claps while the Euro stuff received no excitement (although I do admit that there was very few Euro stuff shown compared to American). That tells me that either 1) most of the audience was American who only wanted “their” models and didn’t give a toss about other countries or 2) as Ben said, there was a lot of the older folks who, again, were only interested in the America/ old/ nostalgic stuff and didn’t care about JDM and especially Euro. This could be true due to the fact many European models aren’t sold in the US (for ex. – RS6 Avant) so they probably don’t even know about them.
On the other hand, I must commend the Hot Wheels team for doing some very cool Euro models like the aforementioned Audi RS6, Countach pace car, Land Rover Defender and the Mercedes Unimog, and bringing back the BMW 2002, while the JDMs like the S15, R32 and especially the Mazda 787B with the removable engine lid deserve applause.
I plan on touching on this in a future post. Nothing to criticize, but the convention does tend to lean older and more towards the nostalgic side.
I live in Dallas. I didn’t even bother going to the convention but had I gone, I would have boo-ed during the presentation. Why? Because this hobby is super frustrating due to distribution. We’re wasting time and gas trying to find even mainline stuff. I’m glad the audience wasn’t excited. Maybe Mattel will finally realize their distribution sucks. If you put more good stuff in a case instead of lots of generics then maybe it wouldn’t be so hard to get stuff and the scalpers will have less incentive to…well…scalp.
So, So, SO much this.
Couple poor case mixes with stores that refuse to restock anything because the pegwarmers from August ’17 haven’t moved, for me, it’s now at the point now where the time and fuel spent looking for even new, licensed mainlines is better spent just paying the scalpers for a casting my son and I really want. Really takes the fun out of it.
I am curious how long you have been collecting? Are you relatively new to the hobby, started within last 5 year?
I don’t think it is Mattel’s distribution issue, it is the stores stocking policies and distribution that is to blame. Also the marketing folks that have decided that licensing money should be spent on 5-10 different specific movies/pop culture lines clogging up dump bins and the already minimal peg space. What I am talking about here are F&F, Star Wars, camo trucks, etc, etc. Essentially they are mainlines with deco schemes themed towards a licensed product and done to ad nauseam.
The real “mainlines” are sharing space and distribution channels with whole shippers full of licensed products not done in what collectors consider real paint schemes. These themed licensed releases are priced the same as mainlines and I would be willing to bet that the retail stores see these .94-.99 cent cars as equal. When you have 400-500 of the themed ones sitting around in a store they probably don’t see the need to order traditional mainline cases. Why? Because in their minds 400-500 .94 cent cars are already in stock.
People probably weren’t excited because a vast majority of those cars have been leaked/shown elsewhere for a while now.
As for distribution problems, I’m certainly burned out enough that I don’t care anymore. Literally haven’t seen a single 2018 car culture; what’s the point? I don’t even look for anything besides redlines now at thrift stores/garage sales. They’re cheaper, better, and easier to find (ironically).
The line up is disappointing, lots of same models with color changes, how many ways can you show the same model. The transport line is something I will buy other than that it appears that the team is losing creativity. Is this the start of the decline of the HW brand.
Thank you for sharing! Good to see the info of what is to come and hearing some progress on the issues that were raised.
The ’69 COPO Corvette is a real treat. Thanks for sharing.
Yeah.. never really get tired of a ’69 Corvette, but i’m going to gripe a little and wished they strayed from the yellow which we’ve already seen from the Corvette Racer in the Redliners line. I like me a nice yellow vette, but it has to be done a certain way and would have preferred a different color scheme. I’ll have to just wait to see when it shelves so I can better judge up close.
I just want to say …. BRING BACK FERRARI… BRING BACK FERRARI… BRING BACK FERRARI.
EVERYTHING ELSE PALES IN COMPARISON!
You have Porsche, that’s enough. /jest
Let’s fill in every other supercar first before we catch up on Ferrari. Take time. Rumor has it that Tomica Basic will get a Ferrari, so it does look like a sign of things to come.
Yeah.. I think I did see the Tomica/Ferrari news on T-Hunted or on LaLD. I dig Porsche, but my heart is for Ferrari!
Meh, personally I haven’t missed Ferraris one bit. No Ferraris in the lineup leaves more room for desirable cars.
I agree with a lot of the comments regarding distribution, people like me in the UK and other European collectors never see any of the specials unless we pay ridiculous money on eBay to obtain the model we want. Why don’t distributors say no to Mattel when they introduce all the Star Wars shit and generics, if I was a shop owner or buyer for a big company, I would refuse to stock anything but licenced cars, Mattel are just taking the piss introducing the “zoom in”, what the fuck was this guy smoking when he designed that, and how did it get past the marketing department ? I paid £150.00 last night for some nice Greenlights and Johnny Lightnings, money that could have gone Mattel’s way had there been any in the local shops.