Shite in Miniature II

[sierraman]

Is B&M still selling Matchbox? 

[Datsuncog]

35 minutes ago, sierraman said:

Is B&M still selling Matchbox? 

The big B&M up the road from me at Abbeycentre still has a couple of pegs of Matchbox short cards, but I don't think they've had any new stock since the middle of last year - still seems to be mostly the mix which had the 70th Anniversary cars, including that Porsche 911 Rallye.

Belfast City Centre branch of B&M has had none for a while.

Belfast Connswater branch was nearly out of them, but did seem to get some more in a few weeks ago - or maybe they just found a stray box out the back. It was the mix with the orange Opel Kadett coupe in it.

The only 2024 Matchbox I've encountered outside independent shops has been in The Entertainer, in Poundland - though they've recently slipped back to the older 2023 mixes too, presumably bought cheap hence selling them for £1.50 with their loyalty app - and in Poundstretcher, who seem to have got a wide variety of short and long card items from 2022 to 2024 all priced at £1.49, but don't seem to have put them on their stockfile so they don't scan at the till.

[Datsuncog]

As an aside, I happened to be strolling through Tesco this morning and realised that The Entertainer toy aisle now has Matchbox mainlines back in stock:

The usual BOGOHP offer is available here too, so £1.80 a throw if you're multibuying - still cheaper than some other outlets. Pity they also seem to be last year's stock - although some lesser-seen items were in there:

I really don't need any more of these, though.

I thought I'd lucked out in Sainsbury's, as their (fairly small) toy range was being reprofiled with a number of fresh Mattel boxes on display...

But the only mainlines were just the mix from back at the start of the year, with the Proton Saga in it. AND the box had already been rifled through to remove any green RS2000s, possibly by staff...

Poundland didn't have very much this week - the £1 Hot Wheels offer with their app seems to have been popular, with the fresh mix including the BMW E30 Touring having flown off the pegs, while their (mostly) 2023 Matchbox mainlines are back up to £2 again.

Some fashionable choices were available elsewhere in store, though...

Though you'd have to be quite tiny to squeeze into this jacket, sadly:

Very much kiddies size.

[IronStar]

18 minutes ago, Datsuncog said:

As an aside, I happened to be strolling through Tesco this morning and realised that The Entertainer toy aisle now has Matchbox mainlines back in stock:

The usual BOGOHP offer is available here too, so £1.80 a throw if you're multibuying - still cheaper than some other outlets. Pity they also seem to be last year's stock - although some lesser-seen items were in there:

I really don't need any more of these, though.

I thought I'd lucked out in Sainsbury's, as their (fairly small) toy range was being reprofiled with a number of fresh Mattel boxes on display...

But the only mainlines were just the mix from back at the start of the year, with the Proton Saga in it. AND the box had already been rifled through to remove any green RS2000s, possibly by staff...

Poundland didn't have very much this week - the £1 Hot Wheels on offer with their app seems to have been popular, with the fresh mix including the BMW E30 Touring having flown off the pegs, while Matchbox mainlines are back up to £2 again.

Some fashionable choices were available elsewhere in store, though...

Though you'd have to be quite tiny to squeeze into this jacket, sadly:

Very much kiddies size.

I hope you picked up that purple AZ1! 😍

[Datsuncog]

6 minutes ago, IronStar said:

I hope you picked up that purple AZ1!

I've already got at least one, possibly two!

Damn, I need to sort out all the Mattel stuff in the back room...

[andrew e]

Surprise bootsale stroll this morning and stumbled on a world class matchbox in cherished condition  for 50p! A couple of chips and a windscreen scuff, but just how I like them, over the moon like a 49 year old kid 😂

 

[sierraman]

55 minutes ago, andrew e said:

Surprise bootsale stroll this morning and stumbled on a world class matchbox in cherished condition  for 50p! A couple of chips and a windscreen scuff, but just how I like them, over the moon like a 49 year old kid 😂

 

I have that one, I remember my mum buying it me when Meadowhall first opened. I recall they didn’t ‘roll’ as well as the usual ones? 

[andrew e]

Its not a TOY its a collectible 🤣 Your right its not free rolling though, maybe that explains the lack of skirting board damage?

[bunglebus]

I also spotted that Hot Wheels shirt, and also decided not to buy it as I don't like the castings depicted

Poundstretcher had a good section of Matchbox with the green Golf and silver Morris - and they hadn't f*cked all the cards this time

[danthecapriman]

Some hacking and butchery going on here!

A while ago I found this picture,

Which I thought would make a fantastic model, but there isn’t really much available to make it so it’s a case of altering things and making your own. 
So another battered Dinky Merryweather sacrificed its cab. I need to find the donor chassis for it but so far can’t find it anywhere.

  
So the trailer was what I turned attention to instead.  
Im going to keep the twin axle chassis and black floor piece and make a flatbed trailer out of that for another truck. The box body needs shortening and a new floor and end wall making for fitting onto a donor single axle trailer chassis.

  

Did a dry run using the double drive MAN tractor to gauge heights etc.

All basically assembled, with rear bumper and wheel arches from a pile of spares from other projects. Axle was too narrow on the donor trailer so I’ve made a new wider axle and some spacers to keep it centred.

 

At the same time I re-bodied one of my Austin FFK trucks. 
Donor is a Pegaso Comet water bowser. Conveniently the two trucks are very close in size so the tanker fit very well onto the FFK, only needing a few spacers making to raise the tanker clear of the rear arches.

      
Almost looks like it was made like this!


   
Had a go at a Bedford CF swb too. 
Simple strip and respray to resemble one I found in a CF catalog from when they were new. Side door has been filed flat and filled to make a no side door van.

  
Got a handful into primer this morning too ready for painting tomorrow.

[bunglebus]

Commercial Corvair looks good

But I reckon the sh*tfire is the one you lot will be getting excited about

[RoadworkUK]

Massive thanks to @FakeConcern for this. Beautifully padded package arrived safely yesterday, with a bit of inevitable "what's that?" eye-rolling from The Management. I don't care. It's great.

[Datsuncog]

9 hours ago, bunglebus said:

Poundstretcher had a good section of Matchbox with the green Golf and silver Morris - and they hadn't f*cked all the cards this time

Yep, I hoovered up a few more from my local branch for £1.49 the other day - I don't actively need them myself, but I think I may be able to trade them for some more interesting stuff...

Or, y'know, just squirrel them away with all the others like some sort of demented person...

[FakeConcern]

11 hours ago, RoadworkUK said:

Massive thanks to @FakeConcern for this. Beautifully padded package arrived safely yesterday, with a bit of inevitable "what's that?" eye-rolling from The Management. I don't care. It's great.

Glad that turned up pretty quickly as some I've posted have taken over a week and thanks for letting me know you've got it!

[bunglebus]

Things are happening in the world of tiny tat. Popped into Smyths and found a couple of new mainlines - thanks to whoever pointed out there are currently two red fox body Mustangs available 

Mrs pulled the Volvo Drift Camper out from the back of the pegs

It's actually an error car thanks to a mashed up front wheel. I've been hoping to find this, and it wasn't going to stay in it's blister either

Thought I'd line it up with the Drift Wagon, obviously the rear of the casting is modified for the tow hitch - but looking closer, almost everything has been altered. Front bumper, grille, headlights, engine, exhausts, side windows, wheel arches and roof are all different, it's even LHD where the old was right. I was thinking of swapping the glass over with the green one but it's not straightforward thanks to the removal of the clear roof and different post location at the back.

Not sure if the trailer is removable, don't want to force it

[bunglebus]

Postal arrivals are a bunch of Corgis, mainly for the tidy Rockets buggy

And a mystery - these have turned up, I haven't bought any Solidos, and checking eBay doesn't give any clues as to who might have sent them in error

[quicksilver]

8 minutes ago, bunglebus said:

Mrs pulled the Volvo Drift Camper out from the back of the pegs

It's actually an error car thanks to a mashed up front wheel. I've been hoping to find this, and it wasn't going to stay in it's blister either

Thought I'd line it up with the Drift Wagon, obviously the rear of the casting is modified for the tow hitch - but looking closer, almost everything has been altered. Front bumper, grille, headlights, engine, exhausts, side windows, wheel arches and roof are all different, it's even LHD where the old was right. I was thinking of swapping the glass over with the green one but it's not straightforward thanks to the removal of the clear roof and different post location at the back.

Not sure if the trailer is removable, don't want to force it

And what exactly is the point of that? Did Mattel hire British Leyland's product planners because they're so good at making totally illogical decisions? They've spent a load of money making tooling for a very niche car, then another load of money making another set of tooling for a completely different model of the same niche car in the same scale. So much of what they do just makes no sense to me.

As an aside, the colour of the new one with the caravan looks very similar to Whiteland Restorations' Project Monica. That's a saloon though.

[Datsuncog]

9 hours ago, quicksilver said:

And what exactly is the point of that? Did Mattel hire British Leyland's product planners because they're so good at making totally illogical decisions? They've spent a load of money making tooling for a very niche car, then another load of money making another set of tooling for a completely different model of the same niche car in the same scale. So much of what they do just makes no sense to me.

There have been some pretty odd decisions by Mattel of late - I'd thought that producing completely different versions of the same vehicle for both Matchbox and Hot Wheels mainlines was weird enough (like the Volvo XC40, both launched in 2023 too), but producing completely different castings of the Volvo 240 Drift Wagon within the same Hot Wheels marketing umbrella is next-level stuff.

I guess we're far from the good ol' days of designers sculpting wooden models and carving out moulds using pantographs, so I can only assume that current CAD programmes and other advanced manufacturing/ stress testing techniques are making it ever-easier to design and create tooling at lower cost - as evidenced by the sheer number of new castings and special editions across all of Mattel's diecast lines, which are reaching frankly bewildering heights.

Not just the mainlines - the number of unique premium and semi-premiums are off the scale, it seems that every month there's another two or three collections of five or more models dropped, many of which are completely new. Some of these castings appear once and then are never seen again, which is even more baffling.

I guess the 'sealed case' nature of Mattel's sales strategy is relevant - whether or not a model is popular with consumers, once it's in the lineup the retailer will get it as part of the case mix, regardless. So sales on a granular level are kinda not Mattel's problem, as long as there's enough overall demand for them to keep selling cases (even the unwanted peg warmers like the Matchbox Luggage Tug and Hot Wheels Deora III will find homes, eventually). The fact that the pack barcodes are all the same means that retailers can't even look at their sales data and see what's popular and what's not, even if they wanted to - it's just an assortment. And yet everyone wants to sell them, apparently. Off the top of my head, I can think of a whopping 51 shops within a ten mile radius of me that stock Hot Wheels - and that's just in one small part of Northern Ireland.

So either Mattel's toy car divisions are wildly out of control (not an impossible scenario, granted), or manufacturing costs have dropped to the point that management can allow designers the freedom to come up with all sorts of variations of weird, niche cars knowing that they'll sell in enough numbers to at least break even. I'd love to know the production figures on mainlines - I reckon these things are being churned out in their tens of millions, so economies of scale come into play. It's entirely possible that the runs are so big that tooling wears out over the course of a single run, and they can either make another set exactly the same or make one a bit different - there may not be much difference to the bottom line.

But even more expensive, kid-oriented lines like the Track Fleet are still widely available - and seemingly pretty popular. I guess on a business level, it's just measured by the number of cases sold, and the designers' job is just to come up with something fun to put in those cases, whatever it may be.

While I'll confess that the sheer number of releases is causing me some degree of mild panic, I grew up in the late '80s wishing I could find more models of 'everyday cars', rather than the exotic supercars and 1950s classics that most toy and model manufacturers offered. And as such, being able to find really quite good miniature versions of Mk2 Escorts and Opel Kadetts in Tesco or B&M for a pound or two is, in a way, a childhood dream come true...

[RoadworkUK]

Is the Drift Camper combo actually based on a real thing? The location of that caravan's axle is making me cross.

[Split_Pin]

I think as far as axle weights go, it would be illegal too.

[sierraman]

1 hour ago, Datsuncog said:

There have been some pretty odd decisions by Mattel of late - I'd thought that producing completely different versions of the same vehicle for both Matchbox and Hot Wheels mainlines was weird enough (like the Volvo XC40, both launched in 2023 too), but producing completely different castings of the Volvo 240 Drift Wagon within the same Hot Wheels marketing umbrella is next-level stuff.

I guess we're far from the good ol' days of designers sculpting wooden models and carving out moulds using pantographs, so I can only assume that current CAD programmes and other advanced manufacturing/ stress testing techniques are making it ever-easier to design and create tooling at lower cost - as evidenced by the sheer number of new castings and special editions across all of Mattel's diecast lines, which are reaching frankly bewildering heights.

Not just the mainlines - the number of unique premium and semi-premiums are off the scale, it seems that every month there's another two or three collections of five or more models dropped, many of which are completely new. Some of these castings appear once and then are never seen again, which is even more baffling.

I guess the 'sealed case' nature of Mattel's sales strategy is relevant - whether or not a model is popular with consumers, once it's in the lineup the retailer will get it as part of the case mix, regardless. So sales on a granular level are kinda not Mattel's problem, as long as there's enough overall demand for them to keep selling cases (the unwanted peg warmers like the Matchbox Luggage Tug and Hot Wheels Deora III will find homes, eventually). The fact that the pack barcodes are all the same means that retailers can't even look at their sales data and see what's popular and what's not, even if they wanted to - it's just an assortment. And yet everyone wants to sell them, apparently. Off the top of my head, I can think of a whopping 51 shops within a ten mile radius of me that stock Hot Wheels - and that's just in one small part of Northern Ireland.

So either Mattel's toy car divisions are wildly out of control (not an impossible scenario, granted), or manufacturing costs have dropped to the point that management can allow designers the freedom to come up with all sorts of variations of weird, niche cars knowing that they'll sell in enough numbers to at least break even. I'd love to know the production figures on mainlines - I reckon these things are being churned out in their tens of millions, so economies of scale come into play. It's entirely possible that the runs are so big that tooling wears out over the course of a single run, and they can either make another set exactly the same or make one a bit different - there may not be much difference to the bottom line.

But even lines like the Track Fleet are still widely available - and seemingly popular. I guess on a business level, it's just measured by the number of cases sold, and the designers' job is just to come up with something fun to put in those cases, whatever it may be.

While I'll confess that the sheer number of releases is causing me some degree of mild panic, I grew up in the late '80s wishing I could find more models of 'everyday cars', rather than the exotic supercars and 1950s classics that most toy and model manufacturers offered. And as such, being able to find really quite good miniature versions of Mk2 Escorts and Opel Kadetts in Tesco or B&M for a pound or two is, in a way, a childhood dream come true...

It’s pretty much ground to a halt in the U.K. now with Matchbox. Same stuff for years on the shelf, maybe it’s intentional, selling in the U.K. must be a massive logistical pain in the arse as it’s mostly a forgotten brand and there’s already a well established market selling Hot Wheels etc. It’s sad but I’ve practically given up on new Matchbox, I can’t justify paying nearly a tenner each posted off wherever and visiting the shops is a waste of time, money and fuel as it’s the same crap for sale. 

[Remspoor]

2 hours ago, Split_Pin said:

I think as far as axle weights go, it would be illegal too.

It is a fucking toy. 😄

[junkyarddog]

Don't recall seeing this casting before.

Was hoping to find the Fiat 500D Modificado,but this will do for today.

[sierraman]

24 minutes ago, Remspoor said:

It is a fucking toy. 😄

Those side exiting exhausts I think would also fall foul of C&U Rules. 😂

[Split_Pin]

34 minutes ago, Remspoor said:

It is a fucking toy. 😄

It is the fucking diecast thread.

[Datsuncog]

Bit of a lunchtime spree netted some unanticipated Matchbox finds:

A Collectors Series 1974 Toyota Celica GT Liftback, and a Moving Parts Series 1970 AMC Javelin.

I've been looking for the Celica ever since I saw a prototype on a Lamley Group post, though my hopes weren't very high - and I expected that eventually I'd have to go online to secure one. Not so, as it turns out.

The Javelin was also one that stirred my interest when I encountered examples online, but when Moving Parts shelf stock in The Entertainer came and went with no sign of it, I assumed I'd missed the boat. Again, I was incorrect.

They weren't exactly cheap, but I doubt I'd have acquired them for much less online, especially with postage factored in... so hey.

Sadly, the world's least enthusiastic shop assistant plainly had somewhere more exciting to be, so I was herded out of the the Smithfield model shop before I could investigate these properly:

Ah well. Next time...

[bunglebus]

I'm not especially an Italian car fanboi but I do like the Lancia Beta, as it was Herbie's love interest in Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo. Amazingly for a Polistil, almost all the bits are there bar broken wiper arms

However the engine cover fell off while I was washing it

Talking of both Volkswagens and Polistil, I bought one

[RoadworkUK]

Polistil looks great. Especially the wheels.

[bunglebus]

Anyway castings getting modified is nothing new

 

[Justwatching]

Picked up a Matchbox Jurassic Park Ford Explorer at a somewhat reasonable price.

Very few diecasts have been made of it over the years, which I find surprising. Maybe the complex appearance makes it expensive to produce? Can't imagine it would be for lack of popularity. 

Sticking with Jurassic Park, I also picked up a Jeep Wrangler by Matchbox a couple of years ago. Don't think I've shown it yet, so here it is.

One of my rarest movie cars though must be this - the Amity Police Chevy Blazer from Jaws. This Hot Wheels Premium model is the only version I've ever seen.