DISNEY Series….? (Character Cars)

Yes yes yes, Disney is still chuggin’ away…though with perhaps a bit less heft than before. We have this new, unnamed wave hitting shelves, with 4 re-releases and 3 brand new Character Cars. I suppose this is Hot Wheels giving stragglers a chance to play catch-up, though 4 cars is hardly a dent in the 7 previous series. But ok, 3 is better than none, right?

• Snow White (Snow White and the Seven Dwarves)
• Pongo (101 Dalmatians)
• Bruce (Finding Nemo)

An interesting but reasonably balanced list…we’ve got Snow White from Disney’s original Golden Age, Pongo reppin’ the company’s Silver Age (not an era we’ve seen many cars from), and then Bruce – technically a product of Pixar – from a relatively new era dominated by CGI.

Snow White has been transformed into a neo-classical automobile and it’s a great fit for her elegance, innocence, and her legendary status amid the entire history of animation. They’ve got her colors down to a tee – the puffy shoulders over the back wheels, the yellow dress, the black hair and red bow and even the white color…everybody knows this is Snow White. Clean, simple, and iconic.

So…a Character Car based on a dog…feels familiar…meet Pongo. Ok, it doesn’t scream “dog!” right away but they do get straight to the “Dalmatian” aspect and you can start to see the ears swept back over the rear wheels. The bright red collar under the front definitively identifies him as Pongo…and not one those other Dalmatians. What really catches my eye is the paint. It’s like a metallic white, which really makes the whole thing pop out and look classy.

And then there was Bruce, a big-ass shark after some tiny-ass fish. He does have a couple of creepy moments in the film though, so I’ll give him that. In keeping with the theme of giving big dudes even bigger vehicles, Bruce is cruising around on 6 big ol’ wheels. He is appropriately big and bulky…and for some reason the base vehicle is essentially a pick-up truck and in the back there’s what appears to be a bitten surfboard and a mine! The strangest feature by far, however, is the mouth…with the faint red stain around the lips. I tried to chalk this up to anything but blood – especially on a toy – but it’s so blotchy and undefined that I really don’t see what else it could be. I mean I think it’s kinda cool, and blood around a shark’s mouth makes sense 100%, but yeah, a little odd for what is ostensibly sold as a “toy.”

And there we go, the latest goodies from Disney. It ain’t quite as cool as a full series, but I guess it’s like, what, a half-series? Yeah that works. Series 7.5. Maybe. I think the choices are solid and I do applaud the wide range of representation of 70ish years of animation, divided fairly equally (early 30’s, late 60’s, mid 00’s). So who’s next? Personally I really want to see an Ursula Character Car; I also think Hades would be pretty cool too. I’d love to see something from The Black Cauldron as well. I do hope they keep up with hitting lots of different movies because there are a lot of strong candidates yet to be covered: The Jungle Book, Cinderlla, Fantasia, The Sword and the Stone, and Pocahontas come to mind off the top of my head. Oh and The Three Caballeros – that was one of my favs as a wee youngin’.

Got any news on the Disney front? Know something I don’t? Wanna just speculate with me? Drop a comment!

Disney Series 7 Character Cars

How long has Series 7 been out? A very long time methinks; I remember seeing it for sale on the web right on the heels of Series 6, but it was months before I’d spot it in the stores and even then, they weren’t just everywhere.

Should we be blaming COVID-19 for these disruptions….? Probably. I am surprised we haven’t seen any Series 8 yet, assuming there are plans for such. But anyway, onto the long awaited Series 7:

• 1 / 6 – Mulan
• 2 / 6 – Sebastian
• 3 / 6 – Cheshire Cat
• 4 / 6 – Wreck-It Ralph
• 5 / 6 – Tiger
• 6 / 6 – Jack Jack

Mulan doesn’t much remind me of Mulan, but I was also a bit older when this came out so it’s not burned into my brain in the same way as The Little Mermaid or The Lion King. There are some obvious features like the paper fan as the spoiler and a shuriken at the upper exhaust. The color scheme is absolutely gorgeous. I love the transition from cream-colored to dark brown to blue and then a kind of sea green.

Sebastian comes to us a cartoony Caddy, and it pretty much looks like Sebastian’s face was molded onto the front of a car. The headlights almost resemble pinchers, and Sebastian’s carapace is evident as the covering of the cabin. It’s like they got off to a good start and then just walked off.

Next is the Cheshire Cat, who can be downright eerie. Overall the vehicle does a good job of representing a portly feline. He’s even got the tail and the pink/magenta stripes. But what do we think of when we think of the Cheshire Cat? Maybe a creepy oversized smile? Those big bright eyes? A floating, disconnected face…? The car tries to capture the smile where the grille would be, but it’s fairly small.

Wreck-It Ralph: truly one of the “new classics” Disney has churned out over the past several years. This vehicle is…unfamiliar to say the least, but I guess it’s supposed to be a more mobile version of your standard crane equipped with a wrecking ball – appropriate enough. There is a certain element of laziness there, like turning a police officer into a police cruiser. Ralph destroys stuff…so does this truck…but what else are we left with to connect…?

Tigger has become a tow truck, so that’s something. The colors are on point, but where is Tigger’s springy tail!? That’s like Tigger’s main thing, bouncin’ all around on his tail… I suppose it’s supposed to be part of the towing apparatus but if so, it just looks broken, or at the least bent the wrong way. What is going on there!?

Last in the set is Jack Jack from The Incredibles who I know next to nothing about. Apparently he’s got a lot of shapeshifting-related powers but you wouldn’t really know that from looking at this compact. If you give it a look directly from the front a rather creepy visage is evident between the lights (rear-view mirrors…?) and the grille…but it looks more like something from a Cars knock-off than it does a baby. They do seem to have gotten the color scheme right at least.

And that, for better or worse, is Series 7. Clearly I am underwhelmed, especially after what I considered a creative high point in Series 6. I dunno if they handed these off to the junior designers or were forced to rush them out or maybe even gathered up rejects from past series, but they feel markedly uninspired and bereft of the creativity that made these so desirable. As if to add insult to injury, 2 of them are imbued with functionless, nondescript pieces of plastic: Ralph’s wrecking ball and Tigger’s towing rig.

So what do you think? Am I being too harsh? Is there something magical about these that I’m missing? Let me know what kind of taste Series 7 left in your mouth, especially when stacked against previous series.

Disney Character Cars – Pixar “Series” (“Series P”?)

Now this is a weird little occurrence that I didn’t see coming, but looking back it was bound to happen. Hot Wheels has been rolling out these Disney Character Cars like a freakin’ machine and with so many new ones hitting shelves, it means the older ones don’t hang around as long. As a way to offer up these older cars to newer fans, it looks like they’re content to put out some “series-less” waves – we saw one of these around Christmas 2019. I’m not sure how this was officially recognized, but right now we have a very similar incident that is officially recognized.

Poised right between Series 6 and Series 7 is the “Disney / Pixar Series”. If you look at singles from past series, you’ll notice that most of the cards have a red background with a big ol’ “Disney” logo in the empty space on the front of the card. Usually one car out of the set would have a blue background and feature the “Pixar” text logo in the free space. Well it looks like Hot Wheels rounded up all these Pixar-specific releases, added Woody and Buzz to the mix (yes they are “Disney characters” but they were conceived as “Toy Story Character Cars”), and now we have a sort of amorphous pit stop between Series 6 and 7:

• Woody
• Buzz Lightyear
• Mr. Incredible
• Mike Wazowski
• Sulley
• Wall-E
• Nemo
• Dory

Generally I would just write this aberration off as a sales gimmick – ok, maybe not a full-on gimmick, but definitely a way to sell old stuff to new people. However, now Buzz and Woody are thrown into the mix and my whole shit is thrown off. Now if the “Disney” versions were different than the “Toy Story” versions I’d have no problem, but for the first time, we have a full-on crossover: 2 cars exists as part of 2 different series/sets of Character Cars. That is frustrating, and yes it bugs the hell out of me, but what I did was buy up Woody & Buzz, specifically these “Disney Pixar” branded versions, and these 2 particular hunks of metal and plastic will live in the DISNEY CHARACTER CARS box.

I don’t mind these sorts of “non-series” so that newcomers can get older cars, but I also kinda like the idea that when I see these that aren’t labelled with any particular series I don’t need to worry about them as long as I’m caught up. I guess that’s technically still true here but it feels sneaky. Wanna reissue Buzz and Woody? Go right ahead, kids love these guys and I bet they’d sell year-round. But straddling these identical cars across 2 series…I feel like a CRT that someone just held a magnet up to.

Anyway there it is / here it is. Buzz and Woody: honorary members of the Disney Character Cars, sans series number or designation within series, a product of the colloquially branded “Series P” (Pixar).

Loads of New Character Cars in Q3/Q4 2020 & 2021

So I stumbled across this article a while ago, lost it, found it again, and now I’m gonna talk about it a lil’ before I lose it again. According to some stuff at ComiCon 2020, we’re in for a boatload of new stuff come Holiday season 2020 and into 2021. I sortta kinda wish Hot Wheels was putting more focus into its 3 juggernauts – Star Wars, Marvel, and DC (I guess you could 3.5 that now and lump Disney in) but it looks like they’ll be branching out into a buncha new subseries as well.

Note: The “pictures” presented here are all sketches and all lifted from the original article over on cnet.com. I was originally just going to link to the article, but I had some serious problems loading and reloading the relevant pages.

Note 2: I have since found some “real” images of some of the vehicles mentioned, and have inserted them in lieu of the sketches where possible.

Star Wars

If you’ve been following anything Star Wars related for the past few months, you probably saw this one coming a mile away: a Character Car based on The Child, colloquially known as “Baby Yoda.”

Supposedly his little head will bob up and down as the vehicle “rolls,” which in and of itself is meant to give the effect that he’s hovering along in his pram. This is sure to be hard one to find; I can only hope Hot Wheels isn’t as scarce with the upcoming wave as they have been with the last several Star Wars releases. The Child is slated to drop along with some “other Star Wars characters,” according to the source. I’m down with all the new stuff but I really wish they’d utilize these slow periods to tick big dogs from earlier movies off the list. And Bodhi. Jesus we need a Bodhi.

But hey, try not to get too excited about this bundle of joy – it’ll be as late as Spring 2021 before we see him!

DCU

DC’s been in a bit of a hibernation for a while and I think we all understand, though I wish that in the meantime Hot Wheels would fill in some gaps like Scarecrow or Clayface or Ra’s or Man-Bat or a million other friends and foes I could rail off. (Kinda surprised we didn’t get a Batwoman treatment…) It looks like our next batch is coming (or may possibly be here in some places) and will pay respects to Wonder Woman 1984. So far it looks like we have our Justice League-era Wonder Woman, Wonder Woman in that Gold Angel Armor we’ve been seeing everywhere, and of course (a very pale version of) Cheetah.

It ain’t a huge addition to the Character Car DCU, but they are good looking cars. I can’t really tell if the “regular” Wonder Woman is different or not…I know at a glance she’s familiar, but that blue rear area can be tricky on some of her releases. In the past it’s been gray, almost black, and what I think is an extremely dark blue.

Masters of the Universe (He-Man)

He-Man was a little before my time but the waves of its success rippled through my early childhood. I’ve never really taken the time to get into it properly, but I have long appreciated the combination of sci-fi and fantasy – I guess it’s a bit like Star Wars with its setting. The toy line is extremely impressive with all shapes and sizes of figures with all sorts of functions and I have no doubt it would make a compelling line of Character Cars. The only problem is that He-Man doesn’t hold a lot of culturally relevant stock with anyone except those on the older side of nerdom.

He-Man

Skeletor

So far it looks like all we have is the concept art for He-Man and Skeletor, though it appears the series will span at least 5 cars with Man-at-Arms, Beast Man, and Teela joining the fray. He-Man looks a lot like a muscle car with a sword on the side, though I’m sure its difficult to convey his “features” to a car. I really like the cool colors on Skeletor, though I wish it didn’t appear to veer into that “rat rod” territory. I get it, the shape lends a sneaky, sinister quality to the character, though I would prefer either a more refined direction, like a hearse, or just going balls crazy with some kinda death machine full of skulls and guns and spikes, I dunno, like something outta Death Race or Twisted Metal.

Marvel

Well, we were supposed to get that Black Widow top-off back in February and I guess we all know how that went. Marvel seems to be picking up the pieces though, and along with Character Cars for the Black Widow flick, they’ve thrown in some for Falcon and the Winter Solider and some other odds and ends as well.

Taskmaster

Ms. Marvel

And these are the ones we really care about: Taskmaster, the Big Bad from the upcoming Black Widow flick, and Ms. Marvel, from….something…looks fairly cartoonish from the art on the card.

Rounding out the wave is Black Widow, Falcon, Black Panther, Miles Morales, and Captain America. None of these are labeled as “First Appearance” but I like to get a good look at ’em myself first. I had hoped that whatever the next Marvel wave brought it’d give us Scarlet Witch but it looks like S.O.L. again. Such a strange hold out…I mean they gave us friggin’ Rescue from Endgame and yet I still got no one for my Vision car to get all smoochy smoochy with. TF Hot Wheels.

Overwatch

Now I keep my ear to the ground but I’m by no means on the up and up with everything that’s hip and new right now, but…Overwatch…isn’t that, like, totes 2017ish? I mean I remember it being all over the place, but haven’t we cycled through quite a few games since then? PUBG, Fortnite, Apex Legends…? Whatever, I guess there’s always some degree of appeal to people in mech suits.

Looks like we’re lookin’ at another set of 5. From L to R we have: Tracer, Reaper, Genji, D.Va, & Soldier 76. I’m…ambivalent at best about the inclusion of Overwatch into the Character Car pantheon, but the concept art is decent looking and I’ll be interested to see how the final product turns out.

Rugrats

This is definitely an unexpected subject for a set of cars, though I guess like SpongeBob you have a relatively small number of very identifiable characters which can make for some very creative cars.

So far it looks like we only have 3 characters, Chuckie Finster and Tommy Pickles up top, respectively, with Reptar below. Reptar seems to me an odd choice, mostly because he isn’t exactly a character…more like a meta-character. If I had to come up with a 5-car set for Rugrats I’d bang ’em out – Tommy Chuckie Angelica Phil & Lil! I’m not really sure how the younger viewers see Dill, Tommy’s “new” younger brother, but for those around during the earliest days, Dill never quite got the foothold in the family that I think the writers were going for.

Then there was Suzie, a very strong 6th wheel but a 6th wheel nonetheless.

The overall artwork is decent, yet I can’t quite get over how closely the fronts are done to resemble faces. I’m also more than a little perturbed that Tommy is imagined as a literal dump truck full of literal shit. Yeah yeah baby diaper poo pee poo poo is “funny” but Rugrats was never a show that fixated on toilet humor. We deserve better. And so does Tommy.

Disney

These 2 just kinda popped up on the list out of left field, but the “Disney” banner seems appropriate enough. I’m assuming it’s a sneak peak at Season 8 or possibly even Season 9.

That’s a dead ringer for Snow White and I think she looks pretty much like what we’d all expect. The apple with the bite taken out of it for the hood ornament is a nice detail. Ooh, does this mean we have a shot at getting all 7 Dwarves as cars…? That would be kinda neat; they could be sold as their own “gift pack.” (I wonder if I can even name all 7…Dopey, Sleepy, Bashful, Happy, Sneezy, Doc, Grumpy…that’s 7! Awesome!)

It’s kinda hard to tell what sort of vehicle they’re shooting for here…it looks vaguely militaristic but so far I’m kinda diggin’ it! Oh and if you didn’t know, that’s Bruce. Still lost? So was I. He was in Finding Nemo. So yeah.

Sanrio

What the hell is Sanrio you ask? It’s something to do with the whole “Hello Kitty” world. This is yet another confirmed subseries featuring Hello Kitty, Gudetama (pictured below), and Keroppi (not pictured).

These guys are…ok. I dunno, that weeabo / fetish for all things Japanese never really hit me. I guess it’s cool that Hot Wheels is trying to get its tendrils into as many corners of nerdom as possible and I can appreciate that, but obviously that’s gonna lead to some of us feeling a bit ostracized from one subset to another.

Final Thoughts

I’m not necessarily jumping for joy over a lot of these choices, but I don’t hate them. I understand wanting to branch out into as many possible directions, though by doing so you do run the risk of diluting the fan pool so much that you have fans of one set or another instead of just “Character Car fans.”

Personally I wish they would stick closer to the roots of “nerdom” and collectibility rather than concerning themselves with certain fads – both past and present. Rugrats, for example is just over and done with. The original show is long since over, there are no current reboots or sequels in play, and peak nostalgia for the franchise has already passed. This is a collection we just don’t need right now, along with Overwatch and Sanrio. And if they want to keep something like He-Man going, then go nuts and give us more than 5 or 6 pieces.

Hot Wheels still has plenty to mine from Marvel, DC, and even Star Wars and I’d really love to see ’em re-center their efforts.

So what do you think of all this upcoming stuff? Exciting? Overwhelming? Are any of these IPs that you were really glad to see? Any that you can’t stand…? Let me know!