Greetings once again folks.  Yeah, it has been awhile, but here in southeastern NY state, it has been horribly slow as far as any new finds are concerned.  Matter of fact, we haven't seen anything new HW-wise in these parts since very early in the year.  But from what I'm hearing from other folks out there, it's pretty much like that everywhere.  Oh yeah, I'm well aware that it's always slow as far as HW's are concerned every year around this time, but this is getting stupid.  It almost makes me wonder if perhaps Mattel is up to something.  Like starve us of our HW's for as long as possible, so that when they flood us again with new stuff, we'll buy it up like mad.  Who knows.  In all the years I've been doing this, I should know that there is never any method to the madness. 

A couple of things of note though.  I found a set of the JL Muscle cars about two weeks ago. No big deal really, I have seen the castings a few times before, but never really paid much attention to them.  Ahh, but this time when I saw them hanging on the pegs at the local TRU they really caught my eye.  To the best of my knowledge, the latest release of the JL Muscle Cars are the first cars to sport the new REDLINE wheels.  And man oh man let me tell ya, these things look GREAT!!!!!  In my opinion, they blow away any attempt Mattel has done as far as redoing the old redline wheels.  Yep, even better then the ones that were on that 30th Twin Mill back in '98.  There are six cars in this release - '67 Olds, '64 GTO, Merc Cyclone, '69 Cougar, '69 Nova, and a '67 Firebird.  Here's a pic of one of them to give you an idea of how great these wheels look:

Now lets hope they put these wheels on the 2001 Holiday Cars this year.  Those wheels and that great JL mirror finish would be one heck of a combination if you ask me.

I've seen some cars from yet another diecast company.  Classic Metal Works is it's name.  I don't know, they may have been around for awhile, but I only heard of them for the first time after I found a few of there 1/25 scale cars in a few of the local stores.  Here is a link to their website:

http://www.classicmetalworks.com/default2.asp

The cars I found are the "Kalifornia Kicks" series.  There's a few things I like about these.  I like the fact that they're cars that haven't already been done 9000 times by every diecast manufacturer under the sun.  I like the fact that they're in 1/25 scale, rather then 1/18,which is just too big for me to put out on display.  I like the price of these too, around 15 bucks for one of these.  These cars are the kind of cars Mattel should be putting out in their larger scale offerings.  Not those dust collectors they've been putting out, like all those Ferraris and other cars that have been beat into the ground already.  And did we really need a 1/18 version of the Cadillac LMP???  I hope to see more from this company, and I hope that they decide to expand their 1/64 scale offerings.  I really like what I have seen so far.  And remember folks, you heard it here first.

That's it for now folks.  Until next time .....

     Mike(^RacerX^)