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Mattel Disney Pixar Diecast CARS: Fixin’ For a Fixing

As I’ve said before, CARS is the greatest diecast line ever design & production wise.

And unlike most other diecast lines, they have actually gone back and fixed certain CARS because of non-canon or production errors but MORE amazingly, they have gone back and even fixed scale issues – which is almost unheard of – so all great.

Of course, as with any diecast line, there is always a compromise in terms of total canonocity and accuracy and production cost & design. Look at a CAR such as DJ …

dj-og

You can only do so much in trying to recreate him as a diecast for $3.49 … the updated Impound DJ is a great balance between accuracy & cost …

impound-wingo-profile

Much closer than the previous DJ’s missing the green design stripping …

dj-og-profile

So what else needs to be fixed?

blingYea, I know it’s a bit much to add actual spinner wheels but the whole bling bling thing is about the gold Piston Cup on the rims so it’s a bit glaring when it’s not colored gold – so yea, need it … and really not a huge fix required …

charlie

charlie-checker

As you can plainly see, RED TAIL LIGHTS as with most “normal” CARS on the road … so why the switch from the correct WM8 release with red tail lights to yellow? Just for variant sake? I can understand if they didn’t paint it at all for money savings sake but to specifically paint a section a DIFFERENT yellow from the body and not red? Weird. Yes, red is probably slightly more expensive but the cost might be a penny more per 25 CARS – hardly a deal breaker … weird switch – other than the most cynical reason (to get you to buy an extra Charlie Checker).

dexter

dexter-grillYep, Monica was right 🙂  – Dexter is not the Dexter … I guess they figured one man’s tow truck character was the same man’s flag man …

doc

Doc’s grill also needs updating. While the early sculpts of many of the CARS were detailed, they kind of skimped on Doc – thinking short term, who would care about the “old dude.” Well, 3 years and 3-million Doc’s later, he needs a much more detailed grill with much more shadowing and depth.

fillmore1Same with Fillmore. He just needs to be spiffed up. His shape is slightly off and you’ll notice that the sills around his windows are soft- along with the front design – just a weaker not-as-detailed mold … these were done in 2005/2006 and just need to be revisited … contrast that with the Sarge mold & design of the same pre-Martin era of 2005/2006 – you can practically see ever rivets …

sarge-fillmoreAnd of course, now, you can also see that Sarge is a tad large … there doesn’t seem to be any plans to fix his scale – maybe in the sequel …

sarge-fill

Kori’s mirrors are the obvious missing element – especially since they were there in the prototypes …

kori

But I also thought she was a bit larger than actual …with the hood slightly off …

kori-cars

And of course, the broccoli head McQueen … yea, tumbleweeds are a hard shape to recreate in plastic form so it’s not like they could conjure up something all that realistic but frankly, this is about as far as you can get from truism…

tumbleweed

tumbleweed2

vitolineNo wonder Vitoline is all mad, they shaved off his mustache grill when he was asleep. They probably rolled into a warm pond of water also 🙂

In the big scheme of things, all small matters – as with any diecast line, you can always nitpick and frankly with CARS, it’s hard – not only are there 200 CARS that are spot on in capturing their characters & personality, they are rolling pieces of art but since they have gone back to fix errors … fixing the scale of TJ, making Darrell Cartrip less clowny, adding the back spoiler decal to McQueen, spiffing up Sally (with Cone) – hopefully, they’ll fix her in regular release – unlike most other diecast CARS, they are perfecting perfection so these might as well go on the list. Some not on the list already have changes coming (yep, there’s a Yeti with snowcones coming in 2010 🙂 ) or Mario Andretti with red rims.

So, whether by accident, design or “not,” hopefully, these might make it onto a list for a fixin’ because the fix is in, we’ll buy the fix and jack up the price of the error variant 🙂

Collect ’em all!

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