Pimp My Batmobile!

In my day job, I am a marketing consultant for a music retailer and a new guitar process service, so I am currently in Anaheim at the Winter NAMM show which unveils all new guitars, amps, equipment etc. for the year. And what do I stumble upon? The Batmobile! It was here promoting the Barris licensed Wing Bat, Krest and Drag-U-La guitars, (of which – as guitars go -  the less said the better) George is supposed to be here today sometime.

The new 1/43 Hot Wheels Batmobile is not slated to be available for the mass market until February. But PMB! has received our samples in from China and shown you it here FIRST ON THE WEB. And because we are tireless (like a golem or Larry King) in our pledge to improve wherever Mattel drops the ball, we already have our first set of upgrades ready for preorder!

Tim at TPM Customs, (the master of teensy figures) has developed a set exclusively for PMB! that includes:

• A nice replacement siren in clear red
• 2 replacement antlers
• A set of figures that sit right in the car very nicely (see the prototypes below)

We are making these available for pre-order only, and only a limited run of them for a very short time. They will be available as a painted set or unpainted if you want to save a few dollars. But don’t look for them to be around or available for very long. Note: the photo here just shows the figures, not the new siren or antlers. We will have these sets ready for pre-order as soon as the beacons and antlers are ready for photographing. This is a great scale model that Mattel did a nice job with. It really appeals to those of us who love our old 1966 Corgi Batmobiles. Everything else on this 1/43 scale car is either easily fixable by a modeler or livable with. But the beacon, antlers and lack of figures are must-fixes, in our opinion.

Well I got mine in today from China. Very nice, even with all the mistakes. Here are some comparison shots with the 1966 Corgi car.

HINT: Rhymes with “Cat Tray Snipes”.

Yep, hats off to Mattel again for skipping the extended Batray striping on another otherwise pretty nice model. Thanks to PMB! friend John Lemay for sending us these shots of his freshly-delivered-from-China 1/43 Batmobile. According to John, the bat-radar and antenna were shipped separately bagged from the car. Chances are that won’t be the case with the final packaged production model. Hey maybe check that baggie for the missing bat-ray stripes too! Ah well. Still a very nice looking 1/43 model. Looks just like a shrunk down 1:18 standard which is uh, good I guess. Though I am getting a bit sick of that juvenile-looking undercarriage. Now if we can just shrink Doug from Insane Detailing down, we can offer replacement parts for this scale too.

From China with love. Popping up on eBay right on schedule (or ahead of schedule, if you’re Mattel.) Looks like some revisions have been made -red striping, 4th fairing scallop etc.  Will post better shots when I get one in.