Buckland Blowouts has landed a nice collection of the oddball first set of Desert Art international cards.

The main difference is the nameplate (if included) is a small sticker on the right inside corner.

By the middle of 2006 and the release of the Desert Art 16 series, the names were added in a more “dignified manner.”

Since the international division is off on its own, there’s actually not much known about these but going by production dates … the story probably goes something like this …

Since the movie was “NASCAR” centric, the overseas box office prospects were not great so the international division of Mattel figured there was not going to much action for these. While the US names were known, they probably didn’t want to expend the energy, time & cost in a) figuring out all the international names assigned to these CARS (Flash McQueen, Cricketto, etc …) and b) and then going to all the trouble to following the EU-Canada rules on printing everything with a name in three to 10 languages on the front. They probably were hoping to just go blank on the front and use the cardback to follow the legal procedure since they could not avoid printing all the legal info needed on the cardback.

However, my guess is Disney or Pixar wanted the names on the front for marketing & branding so they took the cheapest & fastest way possible – creating a sticker …

While I can’t say if it exactly played out like this, the one fact is that the later production ones (going by dates) all have some sort of paper name tag.

So, it seems logical to presume this was a ‘cobbled-together’ first attempt.

So is there a full set of international CARS & cards without any front “name?” Like the US situation, many fans bought and opened and tossed the cards so it’s unclear if there is a full set without any name (stickers), or if there are the first 16 with no paper name tags. Of course adding to the confusion is that the EU release ones range from Canadian cards with three languages (English, French & Spanish) to cards with 3 different languages (English, French & Cyrillic) to ones with a multitude of languages.

That is the reason there is no international visual checklist – sorry – no way to keep track of them all.

Buckland Blowouts was also kind enough to list the production dates of the cards he has – all from 2006 of course. A1 is the factory in Thailand, A2 is believed to the China factory.

And of course, if you’re collecting these, you also want the error one – Sheriff with an upside down license plate.

So, great score “BB” and thanks for all the nice pics. If you have a full set of the “blank” front int’l cards or any other versions, drop us a line.

And of course, a SHILL for the magazine 🙂 Issue 1 contains every US released Desert Art item.