Greetings friends...
I promised last week that we would focus on cars this week, and here we are. Many of us, including yours truly, consider good-looking autos to be the bread and butter of Matchbox, and happily we are seeing more of those in the line this year.
Interestingly, some older car castings are being reintroduced in the lineup this year. Whether this will be a trend into 2014, I can't say. Maybe we will find out something at the Gathering in Albuquerque during the Matchbox presentation in July. But each of these are good-looking and realistic versions of the models used. Like I have said before, I hope you can see that while the brand direction of Matchbox continues in the "Unstoppable" theme, the liveries and decos are realistic. This has been a specific direction the team has taken.
With that, a few of the upcoming street car models to look for:
(As always, these images are shown with Mattel's permission.)
Dodge Viper GTS-R
Ford Shelby GT500
Opel Speedster
Mitsubishi Eclipse
Lotus Europa
Porsche 911 Carrera Convertible
Lastly, another look at an upcoming 60th Anniversary model. The 60th line has been hitting stores in many areas, and I have seen reports of folks finding the Chase Bus in several locations. I was lucky and found one at a Walmart two weeks ago, and many others have done the same. Keep looking, because they are out there.
I have asked the team if the Chase Bus is slated for future batches, and they are looking into that. I will pass it along as soon as they tell me. We should also be seeing another batch of new 60th models in the store shortly.
Some of the most popular models with collectors in the 60th line have been the British cars like the Mini, Routemaster, and Aston Martin. Not only are they beautifully done, they pay homage to Matchbox's roots in the UK. We are happy to preview another British car to look for in upcoming 60th batches, the Jaguar E-Type. It most appropriately dons the British Racing Green, and sports the 60th logo on the rear window:
Those are this week's sneaks. We have more for next week, including a new deco for the VW T1 and another new casting. Stay tuned.
Until then...
