DISNEY Character Cars: Series 5

I’ve been sitting on these for several weeks now but if I keep it up I’m worried a tentative “Series 6” will be on its way! I know they aren’t hot off the presses anymore but they’re still relatively new and worth talking about.

In my obligatory unopened group shot (as seen above!) you’ll see that 2/6 and 3/6 – Anna & Olaf, respectively – are outside of the packaging. This is because these 2, along with Elsa (all the way back from Series 1), all came in the Frozen 3-Pack that I found just a couple weeks prior to this. So for what it’s worth, if you’re planning on getting everyone from Series 5 and you already have an Elsa, you can officially tick the Frozen 3-Pack off of your list.

• 1 / 6 – Pluto
• 2 / 6 – Anna
• 3 / 6 – Olaf
• 4 / 6 – Jafar
• 5 / 6 – Pumbaa
• 6 / 6 – Wall-E

I love how they’ve kicked off each series with a classic Mickey character – Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Goofy, and now Pluto! Who’s next? Daisy? Pete, maybe? Anyways, Pluto comes to us in the form of a stylized, old-school station wagon. It’s covered with a slightly metallic version of Pluto’s recognizable orange color and the entire shape is well-suited to Pluto’s long and lanky figure. The front and rear bumpers even take the color of his collar.

I talked about Anna before when I discussed the 3-Pack, but no harm in taking another look. Anna is just a regular ol’ person, so there’s some difficulty in capturing that essence in a vehicle. Fortunately they’ve managed to make the car look almost just like her outfit, and I love the way the blues come together with that plum-like purple color. I also love the intricate flower design on the hood.

And we’ve spoken about Olaf before as well, but here goes anyway. It’s a snowman as an ice truck – seems pretty legit. The weird part is that his carrot nose now sits above his eyes as the hood of the van. As iconic as snowmen are, I’m surprised they didn’t do more with aspects like the stick-arms and/or lumps of coal. They eyes kinda give it away as Olaf…but that’s about it.

We jump back into brand new territory with Jafar, the Big Bad from Aladdin. I love the mixture of angles and curves here; it reminds me a lot of the Maleficent Character Car…and it also reminds me of some kind of Batmobile! The red and gold accents give it a Brave and the Bold or even Batman Beyond vibe. The car does have a bit of a sinister look to it and the red and black robes are a perfect match for the nefarious Jafar.

Then there’s Pumbaa…did you know it was spelled with 2 “a’s”? I didn’t. Still looks funny. Here we have some kind of all-terrain / jeep-like vehicle where Pumbaa’s tusks become exhaust pipes. The overall shape matches up with Pumbaa pretty well so that’s good, but otherwise there’s just not much of anything distinguishable about him. Maybe something like a Timon-and-Pumbaa hybrid car would work better?

Finally we get Wall-E. Now I’m not very familiar with the film so I really don’t know much beyond what I can see here in front of me. The car is pretty cool looking and easily the most detailed of the lot. It’s got a sort of “used forklift” look to it. The eyes are captured very well in the front windows…and it just dawned on me that Wall-E has been transformed into a garbage truck, not unlike his role in the film as a clean-up robot. Interested in the significance of the plant, it would seem that his seedling represents new plant life on a trashed Earth and the hope of humans returning to their home planet.

Overall I think this is a fairly strong set in the Disney line of Character Cars. Olaf feels a little lazy and Pumbaa may be slightly uninspired, but I really dig the rest and the different approaches taken to make them “look like” their respective characters. Even if the “translations” aren’t always as literal as I would sometimes like to see, there’s a certain abstraction about many of these that I find genuinely clever.

There doesn’t seem to be any hard evidence regarding Series 6 just yet, though the Hot Wheels Wikia (some of their info is really good and others is woefully incomplete/wrong – a more knowledgeable person was curating the “Character Car” area for a while though I don’t think they’ve been terribly active recently) does list Daisy Duck as an upcoming vehicle! I’m totally cool with that, but I want them to move a little further back into their “Renaissance” period and give us some folks from The Little Mermaid, Pocahontas, Hercules, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and even Mulan would be alright.

Let me know who you’re hoping for below!

Disney FROZEN Character Car 3-Pack

Well well, it seems we’ve seen it all! With the release of this domestic 3-pack, Hot Wheels has covered the gamut. Obviously there are the singles we see everyday, then the 2-packs that used to be common (such as Wonder Woman and Ares, Tactical Suit Batman & Aquaman, the 3 early pairs with short comics, etc.), at least one 4-pack in the form of Captain America’s 70th Anniversary (only ever saw this at Kohl’s), the multitude of 5-packs that used to live on shelves (Civil War, Age of Ultron, Batman, and so on), and at least one 6-pack with the new Star Wars – Light vs. Dark Side set. The 3-packs have existed somewhere – we know this because of the 2 Infinity War sets seemingly available only from overseas vendors – yet now we have a confirmed North American 3-pack in the form of the Frozen 3-Pack celebrating the release of Frozen II.

The trio includes Elsa, Olaf, & Anna. Not surprisingly, this is the same Elsa that we saw back in Series 1. However, Olaf and Anna are brand-spankin’ new. There is one tiny hitch though…

…Olaf & Anna are also slated to be part of the Series 5 release, which has just started popping up on eBay a couple of days ago. Of course the good news is that even if you do get the 3-pack you can just skip over Olaf and Anna when they’re released singly.

Honestly that’s kind of a bummer. I was really hoping there’d be something exclusive to this 3-pack to give it some heft and significance, but unfortunately it’ll just be an inobtrusive footnote in the Character Car annuls.

Anna is a great looking car…I don’t know how much of a “character” it looks like but the colors are great.’ The pale blue is a sharp contrast to the deep, metalflake purple, and the darker blue interior and sides give it some depth. The focal point is the black hood with the delicate, colorful rose pattern. I’m not overly familiar with the Frozen franchise, but this car, based on Anna’s typical attire, comes together very well.

Olaf leans a little more whimsical. The snowman becomes…an ice truck. Not even ice cream, just ice. Everything here seems pretty standard, although Olaf’s carrot / nose seems to be in the wrong place (above his eyes rather than under them). I guess that’s about all I’ve got…sure they stuck Olaf’s face on the front of a van (sort of), but I would’ve liked to have seen more “snowman-y-ness” and maybe some stick arms or something.

Elsa is a fantastic car that I go into more detail about in the Disney Series 1 piece. In a nutshell, the multiple blues and the differing opacities really capture that icy feel, and the sleek, flowing design is a perfect match for Elsa’s femininity.

Overall I think the Frozen 3-Pack is a good idea, but I ain’t so sure that Hot Wheels made the most of it. First of all, I’ve only been able to find this at Kohl’s. Now that’s not a deal breaker, but it is weird. And get this: if you walk from the front of the store and down the right (or left) hand side down to the toys at the back, you’ll encounter no less than 4 display’s for Frozen / Frozen II before even getting to the toys. One of these is not in the aisle and sort of carves out a small spot to the side. If you go over and squeeze between the shelf and the wall and look up at the top shelf, you might be able to spot about 2/3 of 3 or 4 3-packs. It’s fucking weird. (The only reason I found these was because I happened to be searching for “character cars” while wandering around my closest Kohl’s and there was a little Google Shopping noticed that there was one of these 3-packs in store a mere 0.0 miles away!)

Like I said earlier though, I think it’d be better if there was more significance attached to it. When you can (or will shortly be able to) procure all of these cars elsewhere, what’s the point…? Even if Hot Wheels wanted to be lazy and use the same 3 characters, they could’ve given the folks in the 3-pack a special paint job or some other minor flourish, just enough of something to keep the cars distinguishable. What strikes me as totally bizarre about it all is that it’s a) not particularly easy to find and b) it’s not really necessary for completing / keeping one’s collection up to date.

So that’s that – let me know if you find or see this at any other brick-n-mortar locations aside from Kohl’s. I’m also pretty sure the Elsa is the same but I’ll also pay close attention to the other Series 5 cars when they come out just to make sure!