And my eyes fill with sand,
As I scan,
This wasted land.
("Kashmir",Led Zepplin)

Yeah.  It's that time of the year again for all us die cast collecting folks.  A whole lotta nuttin' in all the stores.  Christmas leftovers, and bottomless bins o' death filled with bent twisted HW bp's.  Last time I was at TRU, tumbleweeds were blowin' down the die cast aisle.  I have come across a few odds and ends in my travels tho that I thought were exciting enough to add to my ever growing collection.  Here's a few highlights:

Johnny Lightning First Shot Corvettes.

Found these at a no-name family discount store near here.  They were reduced down to $3.99.  Quite a bit cheaper then what they were when they were in the stores a while ago.  I opened these babies up and gave my kid the unpainted one from each set.  I personally don't get the reason why they include an unpainted car in the set, but whatever.  Maybe they were trying to copy the MB Inaugural sets from a few years back???  They were nice, but they flopped also because of the price.  Anywho, let it be said that I am a sucker for that old Topper Johnny Lightning "mirror finish."  And that's what these babies are.  But it doesn't end with just the finish.  These cars have some of the best detail I've ever seen on ANY die cast Corvette.  They're proportionally correct, unlike a lot of the earlier JL's from a few years ago.  All of the trim is painted (window chrome, door handles, etc), which really adds a nice touch.  The only thing I do not like about these, and it's pretty minor, is that the wing windows are painted silver, rather then molded into the windshield.  Not a biggie.  All said and done, an outstanding effort by the folks at Playing Mantis.

Hot Wheels 30th Ann Muscle Car Set.

Don't hold me to the name of this set.  As soon as I got it, I opened it up and unscrewed the cars from the box, and tossed it in the trash.  This is another discount store special.  I believe I paid $12.99 for it, quite a bit cheaper then the $39.95 I saw it for at TRU and Wal-Mart.  The four cars in this set are a '70 Pontiac T/A, '70 Dodge Challenger, '70 Boss Mustang, and a '70 Plymouth Super Bee.  This is a pretty sharp set of cars.  The '70 Super Bee reminds me a lot of a Coronet my cousin had with a 440 Magnum (the legendary "cop motor" as we called it") with two four barrels on it.  Used to cruise around Minneola NY in it with the hood off.  You had to really brace yourself when you punched that baby, or you could end up with a serious neck injury from the G force that the car put out.  Aaaaaaaanyways, no complaints really about this set.  Well, one small one.  All the cars in the set are painted in colors that the real 1:1 cars came in back in the day, with the exception of the Mustang.  I remember the Mustangs from back then (my dad had one), and I don't recall ever seeing one in the color that the HW version is in.  A minor complaint, but it bothered me just the same.

2001 FE #2 Surfin School Bus

I actually found this one a little before Christmas, but I like it so much, I wanted to make a few comments about it.  First off, I LOVE this car!!!  It's cars like this that is what made Hot Wheels "the hottest metal cars in the world."  It's hard to look at this car and not be reminded of the old redline S'Cool Bus.  Matter of fact, this car would look unreal with a set of original redlines on it.  Lot's of detail, and the fake wood tampos are excellent.  I guess these are the new heat transfer tampos that are showing up on a lot of the new cars.  I think they're great, they seem to be able to get a lot more detail out of them then they could with the old painted on tampos.  I can't help but think tho that this is probably going to be the best offering out of the '01 line up.  I just don't see anything in the mix for this year that even comes close to this one.

I've noticed something over the last few months in my never ending quest for new Hot Wheels.  I remember back in say '95, '96, it would seem like First Editions would ship only one per case for what seemed like forever.  I've been lucky enough over the last few months to open a few cases here and there, and the amount of new stuff in the cases is substantially higher than ever before.  I'd say in the cases I opened, at least 75% of the stuff in it was new, even if it was just repaints of older stuff.  Makes me think, maybe Mattel is finally getting smart???  Folks get into collecting, and a lot of them just as quickly get out, because they can never find anything.  Maybe they finally figured out if they give the collectors what they want, which is the new stuff, they'll stay interested in collecting longer, and Mattel will in turn sell a lot more HW's in the process.  I noticed too that on eBay and other auction sites, scalpin' HW's just ain't what it used to be.  Tons and tons of new stuff goes by every day on there without even a single bid.  Good.  Should be interesting to see how it plays out down the road.  Hopefully, I'm right, and Mattel did finally wake up.

That's it for now folks, until next time, happy hunting....

     Mike(^RacerX^)