Pimp My Batmobile!

Posts Tagged ‘mattel’

Introducing the new Gen 2 Crimefighter Figure Sets. If you have these on order, the unfinished ones are in and starting to ship now. We just got word that the painted/finished ones are in the U.S. at customs right now, due here any day. If you have them on order – look for them later this week. We just need to get them in, packed and out. If you haven’t ordered them – We expect to be sold out before Christmas so plan accordingly.

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)

How about individual Dash Indicators with real metal bases?

Sorting, sorting, sorting…

Well, kind of…

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

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.