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!