Pimp My Batmobile!

Just heard back from our first giveaway winner Mnbatman (also known as Kent Themmes) that he received the 1:50 Hot Wheels Batcycle and Batmobile set safe and sound. Thanks for the photo Kent. Nice shirt!

If you guys haven’t checked out Joe Kelly Jr.’s Playing With Cars website (the web component of The Car Room magazine) you’ve been missing out on the most informative, best-produced model car entusisast resource there is in the world. I’ve long admired Joe’s informative and entertaining video reviews of some of the coolest die-cast models and this weekend he produced a video on the Elite Batmobile!

One of the best things about Joe’s videos are - him! His attitude and delivery are a breath of fresh air in this hobby. I was trying to get him a couple shots he needed of the undercarriage but I missed his deadline and he still gave us a shout-out on the video! How cool is that!

One of the other great things is that Joe does his own music for his videos and produces them himself. I composed and recorded music for commercials professionally for 12 years, own a small studio and I’m still stealing Queen songs for my You Tube vids. LOL Maybe next time!

Anyway - I highly recommend bookmarking his site if you’re a fan of automobilia at all, and specifically going there to watch the Batmobile video that’s up right now. He also has great sponsors and lots of accessories that would go well with the Batmobile.

-Scot

If you’ve been patiently waiting for our newly designed decals to get started on your Hot Wheels mods - the wait is over. Andy got them out to us yesterday and they are great. Check them out on the products page. Everyone keeps asking if they are the same as Jason’s decals that he sells on ebay, so here’s the real poop - NO. They are all new, CORRECTLY sized designs spefically for the Hot Wheels 1:19.5 scale Batmobile. Jason’s decal set (which Andy also designed for him) were created for his resin 1:18 scale model 2 years ago. They’re nice, but his model is a full scale bigger than the Hot Wheels car so many of his decals do not fit the Hot Wheels car at all. We could have released those decals months ago, but instead - Andy went back to his original art, measured and re-sized everything for the Hot Wheels specs and now we have much more precisely-fitting decals available.

They are professionally printed wet-slide decals printed in full-color including silver! Just cut them and place them as needed. They work great with the photo-etch metal parts also available on the products page and the upcoming parts upgrade set which is almost ready for production.

So the official announcement of the 1:50 Batgirl Cycle as the SDCC promo vehicle is now okay to talk about. There may be photos on Friday. Check on the 1966 Batmobile board for more info. Looks like it’s part of a three pack at least at the show, which leads me to believe they might do a mass release of it on a single card. Here’s hoping, anyway.

See, people were moaning amount my hints, but really all you needed was the very first one:

We have a winner! Of the 167 registered users we had as of 6/1 our random number generator selected mnbatman as the recipient of the 1:50 Batmobile and Batcycle set! If you’re out there, mnbatman - give us a shout.

So let’s see what else…The seated figure samples just got here and they look better than we had hoped for. Production starts rolling and we should be shipping those out very soon. Thanks for all your patience.

And we are almost set to start production of the Parts Upgrade set #1 which will include a modified version of the Elite’s newly resized batphone. So some of you wanting to stick to customizing the standard edition can get the only useful part from the Elite version for your mod job. And it will be better. How? Wait and see.

New video slide show of the dealer’s sample sent to us courtesy of Replicarz.com (Replicarz still has Elites for ordering) Actual video footage coming up in the next day or so. Comments below. 

Overall - lots of nice upgrades. Sadly - most of them just make the model look more accurate to the #1 car IN ITS CURRENT STATE, in Barris’ garage. Not how the car looked on screen or in 1966. Here are some interesting hard to see new differences from the standard model to watch for:

• Flocked carpeting
• New detectoscope with inner decal (not accurate at all)
• Aluminum painted rocker panels and door-wells (no texture detail)
• Chrome, UN-segmented dash with open Futura radio(?) and other odd guage
• Parachute pull ring (black plastic)
• Resized batphone with cord
• Chromed inner door trim
• Light lenses under front and rear gills
• Compass decal
• Steering wheel chrome inner struts and center decal
• Photo-etched door handles
• Photo-etched bat radar
• Full fire extinguisher
• Clear red antler lenses
• Routed and painted chassis
• Seatbelts and bat buckles

 More photos courtesy of Pennyworth (Mike D.)

Just received this morning from Brian at Replicarz. More details later. Pics for now.  Check out the bent Bat-Radar. (Just like the resin models!) It’s NOT photo etched exactly, but it is detailed finer than the standard model. The phone has been shrunk down! Still big but MUCH better. More later tonight.

From my post on the 1966 Batmobile website from 5/14/08:

I am exploring this a little with some detective work. Eric said originally:
“For Comic-Con 2008, Hot Wheels will have an exclusive Bat-vehicle like they did last year. I’m sworn to secrecy of which one it will be, but I can tell you it is a ‘66 Batman related item and it does have wheels & probably 1:50th scale!!” So -

It’s our first giveaway! And a first look video at the 1:50 Bat-vehicles with some size comparisons. No, we’re not pointing out all the flaws and taking them apart…yet.

Here are the rules of the giveaway. They’re pretty simple. It’s not a contest. No purchase is neccesary.  If you’re already a registered PMB! user - you’re already in the ring. If you’re not - go register. Here are the ridiculously few and simple rules:

• You must use a real email address. (Because that’s how we’ll notify you)
• You must be registered by 12:00am June 2nd.
• The offer includes shipping to lower 48 US States only. If you are from somewhere else - sorry - you’ll have to pay postage. If you don’t want it - it will go to the next person.
• On June 5th, after organizing my registrants, I will draw one registered email at random. That person will get the vehicles.
• I am giving away (1) 1:50 Batmobile and (1) 1:50 Batcycle, carded. 
• If I contact you by email - you have 48 hours to respond and “claim” your prize.
• That’s it. Except - you need to send us a photo of yourself with the  toys when you get them.

Alexander Rivera is a toy designer, moldmaker, caster, jewelry designer living in Alameda, CA. He has been a creative coordinator at Streamline Pictures, worked for Horizon Models, Testors, and has worked in the hobby business since he was 17.

His work has been seen over on the Batmobile site and I wanted to get him to talk about some of his techniques. Moldmaking and casting are a little daunting to some of our more casual hobbyists but achieving a super-accurate Batmobile is still within your reach! Alexander’s goal is to “to make the best standard Batmobile I can, as economically as possible.”

Here’s his work on removing the paint from the canopies:

One of the first things I wanted to do was to remove the black center paint on the canopies. They were not on the car when filming, so I remove the chassis and carefully sliced off the pins that hold the canopies to the body. Then gently pop the canopy off the arch,being careful because it is glued. The glue leaves a residue on both the canopy and the bar. This must be sanded down,using 600 to 1500 grit sandpaper in increasing progression. Use dishwashing liquid as a lubricant with each grade of sandpaper. What you’re left with after sanding is a fine foggy area which will have to be polished out. A product called Flitz and a cotton cloth should do it.

To remove the black paint, I used Easy Lift Off made by Polly-S.