Pimp My Batmobile!

Posts Tagged ‘elite batmobile’

1. Back From Chicago. We took a quick trip to Chicagoland over Labor Day weekend to meet our future in-laws and take A. to the Legoland Discovery Center (the only one in this country) The lego place was pretty cool, though over-valued for what you got. The Lego stores however were amazing. Imagine being a 7 year old and being allowed to buy replacement Lego parts from bins… Oh yeah, they had this cool thing to pose with:

2. Crimefighter Figures. The second and last batch of finished/painted crimefighter figure sets are going out this week. That’s it for the first gen. figures. We are working on a follow-up set but we don’t expect to have news on them for a little while yet. Our thanks to everyone who’s been patient and supportive through us finding our way with these.

3. Upgrade Parts Set #01. Well the Super Elite came, saw, but sadly didn’t conquer. Not even close. But we said we were waiting and we did. So now the wait is over. We are now moving forward with the first parts upgrade set. Hopefully we’ll have news on ordering and what’s in the final set very, very soon.

4. Products Page Updates. These are coming this weekend. We promise. Other new items and corrected pricing and photos. Sorry but we’ve been BIZZY. If you’re still having problems logging in – read one of the many helpful explanatory articles peppered here and there on this site.

Last year, this ad appeared in some trade magazines showing the then prototype Hot Wheels 1:18 Batmobile:

Since then, we waited patiently as the Standard, Elite and Super Elite editions have been issued. It might be interesting now to take a look at things that changed (other than the previously well-discussed rollbar/canopy revisions) as the production cars came out. (This topic was sparked by Tim, thanks)

1. Bat Ray Trim Striping
Well this is one aspect of the prototype that we all naturally expected to get carried through to production but for whatever reasons – it wasn’t. What first seemed like an error of omission has since bloomed into an obviously economics-based intentional gaffe. They had too long to fix the paint apps and too many people have been complaining for 6 months for this to be acccidental.

2. Barris & Ford Badges
When HW laser-scanned the car, they brought along many placards and badges. These seem to indicate that both the Barris shield and the Ford oval badge that lingered on the #1 car as a reminder of Barris’ Ford sponsorship was intended to be part of the final product at one time. Maybe HW was trying to get Ford to pay for some of the tool-ups and the deal never got inked. Either way – they are both gone by the time we got the toys. It has been indicated elsewhere that Barris was only paid a consulting fee for this project. Maybe they tried to sell him ad space as well. 

3. Bat Radar  This just looks like a proto-mockup that they would eventually replace with either the plastic piece on the Standard or the photoetch piece on the Elites.

4. Rear Antenna Not a big thing but the prototype’s was taller and more accurate looking than any version that we got. Amazing because a guitar string looks better than any of their versions.

5. Non-Rader Wheel Rims This is pretty interesting because it shows that originally the rims were much closer to the ones on Barris’ car NOW (which are not Raders). One of the few times they seemed to skew toward 1966 versus the current condition of the car. (Though the new ones seem to be tri-ridge as opposed to just center ridge)

Are there more differences that we can’t see from this shot? Are there ones that YOU see and we missed? Let us know.

Jakob Nielsen says cute headlines don’t work.

This is my desk at the moment.

Initial builds and brush-ups by TPM Customs, this first batch awaits some bat decals and final detailing and out they go. Just wanted to update some of you patient pre-orderers. I know it’s been a while, but we ARE showing progress. 

This is my other desk at the moment.

Suck ass Jakob Nielsen.

I have long been an admirer of artist Jim Hopkins’ work. Jim is an illustrator living in New Jersey and in addition to traditional illustration techniques, he has developed something he calls “3D Art” that I think is really amazing. I first saw his ‘66 bat-themed work many years ago and was blown away by the process. It is very hard to describe in text or over the internet. It has to be seen in person to be fully appreciated. But here’s Jim’s description:

 ”I always wanted to be an animator and was fascinated by the multi-plane cameras created by Disney Studios and how animators used it to create a 3d effect in animation movies. My art has the same basic principle. each illustration is cut out by hand with an exacto knife then all the whited edges from the cuts are hand painted to match the illustration. each illustration is accompanied by one to two sheets of glass, sometimes I will have to paint portions of the illustration right on the glass. For example if I do a Read the rest of this entry »

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.