Brian Jones from Sycamore, Illinois!

Congratulations Brian!

Brian has been contacted and says he never wins anything and is very excited.

As an added surprise bonus – You’re ALL Winners!  That’s right, we have decided to award a $5 coupon to anyone who entered the giveaway good toward any purchase over $60.00 at PMB! (good toward any new $60.00 or more purchase from this date forward, not an older purchase or preorder that hasn’t been shipped yet) If you are in this category (and yes, we have the list) and are buying something in the future – just let us know so we can apply your coupon. Or just wait until we send a real coupon code out later.

Thanks again for participating. We are working on preorder items and should be updating this page with parts info soon.

_____________________________________________________________________________________Our great  friends at REPLICARZ have made it possible for us to give away a FANTASTIC set of Batmobile goodies worth over $400.00 that some lucky person will be thrilled to get. Here’s the rundown:

• 1 Hot Wheels 1/18 Super Elite Batmobile, MIB! Graciously supplied by REPLICARZ!
• 1 Hot Wheels SDCC Edition 1/50 Batgirl Cycle gift set MIB
• 1 Hot Wheels 1/50 Batboat MOC
• 1 PMB! 1/18 Crimefighter Figure Set (unpainted)
• 1 PMB! T-shirt (sizes are limited)

How it works. This NOT a raffle or a sweepstakes. We are giving these items away completely free. However, we will be picking numbers from our new database. We will collect names to draw, (completely at random based on a numbered system and a true random draw) and pick a recipient on April 15th.

• This isn’t a raffle or sweepstakes, technically no purchase is necessary.
• Shipping of the items will be free to all continental US states. If an international  donor is drawn, you will need to pay the actual shipping costs.
• We will close the list on April 15th at which time we will then pick the recipient and announce on April 16th.

These items and more are now open to the public in the Custom Shop. Introductory and Sale prices will last until 4/15.

1.) We migrated our server today (Yay!) so if there are some little glitches with the new site or how it is behaving – let me know. It seems fine but ya never know.

2) The place to subscribe to our email list for sales updates etc. is not the same as the WordPress registration. It is over in the right hand sidebar under “subscribe to our mailing list”  You can just click HERE to get there too.

3) A little trash talk time. A couple people have sent me links to these Bat figures that heroes Club is selling on ebay. And I just have to spout off a bit. Firstly – I would hope that you folks that call yourselves bat-collectors would recognize that they just recast the Polar Lights Batboat figures. Here are the two sets of figures:

1. Polar Lights Batboat:

2. Heroes Club Figures:

Now, it really doesn’t take too much of a detective to realize these are the same figures. That would be fine too.We certainly borrowed some existing figures to make our gen 1 sets. But here’s the deal. Do the math. the Polar Lights Batboat is a 1/25 scale model. So these figures are (as you can see) much too small for the car. And the ones I saw were cast in a static posed hard vinyl and just look very comic booky, not like Adam and Burt at all. Comic Booky, small, poorly painted and crazy bright. And they did a piss-poor job of switching Robin’s bent arm to boot. I think these look ghastly.

So hey – if you want to chalk this up to trash talk – feel free. We’re going to be all out (for good) of our figures by April so it doesn’t really impact us at all. But if you’re buying these because you think $50 is a bargain – just be forewarned: You get what you pay for.  Not only that but our new run of figures is almost as affordable. (shhhh don’t let that out yet – it’s a sale secret!)

It’s the beginning of a new year and I’m cleaning out some old stock (as well as some cobwebs). I’ve got a very few sets of painted figures that came from our supplier a teensy bit off from our specs. Whether it’s a missing paint app. here, or a snapped off hand there, they are just not up to our standards. And so, rather than having us refurb. and resell them, I thought we’d open them up to anyone who may have been eyeing these up and was waiting for a drastic, unprecedented drop in price. SO – here you go, I’m not going to list all the little defects, but these are all only very slightly ‘off’ from the premium sets in quality but at least 50% off the regular price! You may have to reattach an arm or hand, or repaint a belt or something small, but that’s really about it.  If you’re handy with glue or a little paint and want to save some jing, this deal is for you. Contact me via email.

1. Membership has it’s privileges. Well our super secret holiday sale is now over. It went for a week and did very well. Lots of registered PMB! users were able to take advantage of the savings and get some items they were eyeing up all year. If you want to get on the list for the next one, make sure you register here and/or sign up for the newsletter in the sidebar to the right. (form going up soon) Prices have reverted to normal for the time being. If for some reason you were registered and didn’t get the links to the sale – please let me know.

2. Gen 2 Figures. We’ve had a phenomenal response to our Gen 2 figure sets. Like a knucklehead though, I miscounted the unfinished sets I had on hand. This was not entirely my fault as the manufacturer packed those figures with one figure in each box instead of two to a box like the painted ones. So I thought I had twice as many as I actually had. BUT the good news is that there are some more due here any day and we’ll get those orders out as soon as possible.

3. Upgrade Parts Sets. Yes, we know we’re very late on these. Good thing nobody has paid for any preorders yet. Since we’re small, we have to do things as fast as we can manage and that sometimes seems pretty slow to folks anxioulsy awaiting new stuff. The good news is that our team of developers kicks butt. Boy are we glad we waited on a few of these things. All new Detect-A-Scope. All new Ansen T-Handles. And the big 2009 news is almost too good to keep to ourselves. (Almost, heh heh) Anyway, we are moving forward on these things and have been gearing up with new mold-making supplies etc. to do some parts making over the holiday. So stay patient and you will be rewarded.

4. We now have Super Elites! So if you’ve been wanting to get one of these highest-end of all the Hot Wheels Batmobiles  – we’ve got them. And at $225.00 they’re priced to sell. Treat yourself  to a Christmas bonus, whether you’ve been naughty or nice.

We at PimpMyBatmobile hope all of you have a very Merry Christmas this year. We’ll be updating more and sharing some more progress shots over the next few weeks so keep stopping in.

-Scot

Pictured is our prototype set. They’re a little beat up from traveling to Tiki Con and we made a couple little tweaks to the final ones based on a few comments people made at Tiki. I know everyone says this but honestly – pictures don’t do these justice.  They are really, really cool in person. See our upcoming youtube commercial to see them in video.

Info on the figures:

• Produced in Asia by a professional toy design company
• Multiple articulation points at wrists & shoulders (or can be glued)
• Unfinished sets – No clean-up needed, and they are pre-assembled
• Pressure pot cast in clean lightweight urethane
• Sidekick’s hand can be made to hold the PMB! Batphone handset.

How are those for improvements?

So, does he FIT? Yes! With a few disclaimers. The Caped Crusader will not simply slide in behind the wheel, now that he has legs. Sorry. Blame Hot Wheels and their interesting take on the interior space. If you don’t do anything to the wheel – yes, you can squeeze him in there, but it will be a tight fit and he won’t be coming in and out much. But wait – you have options

Here’s the skinny on the fit.  The physics of the thing are such that Hot Wheels simply didn’t give us enough space to achieve natural looking, seated figures that would fit under that steering wheel in its current configuration without a bit of a squeeze. Sorry. Ain’t gonna happen. Believe me we tried. The figures just didn’t end up looking right.

BUT There are a few workarounds to this problem going from the very, very easy to the more involved. There are some easily achievable quick-modifications that will allow much more leeway to the fit. Some involve the wheel, some involve the figures, some involve the seats.

Read about those options HERE (you can also access this page from the main right-hand sidebar under “Pages”)

Hot Wheels Fire Extinguisher on the left.
Pimp My Batmobile custom Fire Extinguisher on the right.
You decide.

(See the message board for recipe)

Sorting, sorting, sorting…

Peter Smith from Screaming Tiki Con just announced that Mattel/Hot Wheels are going to be at Tiki Con next week (wow, next week) and as you may already know – PMB! is going to be there too.  So maybe we’ll get to ask them some questions about some of their batmobile decisions… Hmm.  We don;t know what they’ll be doing there but we heard they might be selling Batgirl Cycle 3-packs.  Our educated guess is that since Yvonne is going to be there – they’ll have some signed boxed sets for sale.

Anyway – just a reminder that we will be there as well. Tim Meyer from “TPM Customs” and Tara Taylor from “T-Wear”  and I will be at the show. And we expect to have some surprises (hopefully) but I want to dispel any rumors here and now:

1. We will not be showing/selling the completed new upgrade parts sets. We will be showing some of the new parts, but we are waiting for some parts to come in from a few more vendors still.

2.  We probably won’t have a complete fully-modded Batmobile on hand. Sorry. We’ve been too busy lately.

Hopefully the stuff we DO bring will suffice for a little while. Oh did I mention we’ll be giving away some cool stuff each day of the show?

Hope to see you there. Niles Ohio, October 17/18/19 Click on the sidebar image to find out more about the con.

-S

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.