Many of the stories on this page are fiction.
Please keep that in mind when reading them.

I am a creature of many hobbies and habits (mostly bad). We'll ignore the habits for now and concentrate on the Hobbies.  Two of them anyway. Diecast car collecting and slot car racing.
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First off, as a preface, let me say I'm disappointed with Mattel (whew, that lightning bolt from the sky JUST missed me).  As owners of Tyco, which COULD be the premiere HO scale slot car company in the WORLD with just a little effort, and owners of Matchbox and Hot Wheels.  This one should have come to them first.
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Late last year, Playing Mantis introduced the Thunderjets and Thunderjet 500 series of toy cars.  Nicely detailed and in cool colors these cars come on a pull back chassis and in their own right, are pretty cool to play with.  BUT The REALLY cool thing about these cars is you can either unscrew or unsnap them from their pull back chassis and mount them on your old Aurora thunder jet or AFX  slot car chassis and race them on your track.  In the case of the Thunderjets, they will even snap onto a brand new Tomy (Tyco, now Hot Wheels electric racing, chief
competitor in HO slot cars) chassis.  Where were these things when I was a Kid!?!?  We used to try everything under the sun to take a Hot Wheels car and make them run on the home slot tracks. Hard to say how many old redline Custom Cudas or Mustangs I destroyed trying to find a car which would look cool and run fast.  Unfortunately, the metal bodies were too heavy for the weak slot car engines of the late 60's and early 70's, Not
to mention the havoc caused when a metal body shorted out a lane or two. And besides, they never really did fit right. But now, head to Kay Bee Toys, shell out $4.00 and you have a brand new, and very cool, body for your old slot car chassis.
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In Mattel's defense, they DID  introduce a couple of cars Hot Wheel collectors would recognize in the new Hot Wheels electric racing sets. Mainly the Twin Mill II and the 40 Ford Pick-up from the 98 First edition set.  Sadly these cars were not very main stream and didn't cause much interest in the slot car community.  And in order to buy these bodies, you had to buy an entire slot car, which defeats the whole idea of a hobby crossover.  Why with these new Johnny Lightning cars, you can have pull back car races out on the garage floor. Then snap them on to your best slot chassis and take a few laps around the track.
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The only sad thing about the new JL cars is the still small number of models they introduced.  Twelve of each chassis style (Thunderjet 500, or t-jets, and the Thunderjets, or AFX) They put out 6 Classic style cars, which were bodies originally produced by Aurora, and 6 New body styles. I still can't decide which I prefer.  While I have a soft spot for say the Chevy Nomad, I really like the new Viper too. And I do have to admit, they picked some pretty cool cars to try this idea out with. Hopefully in the near future, they will introduce some more new, AND classic bodies.
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Anyway, what I really would like to see is Mattel put some effort into the HO slot car division.  And maybe, just maybe, put out some new, cool cars we multi hobbyists can enjoy in more than one way.
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Love, ROCK