Pixar and Mattel do honor great cars

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I wrote shortly about this yesterday, and I would like to go even deeper today.

It was so evident to me when I got the three new team chiefs. First we have Austin Littleton:

He´s a Mini Cooper from 1961. His first name is a reference to when the British car manufacturer Austin made Mini´s (back then both Austin and Morris made the car for British Motor Corporation).

The Mini is the british answer to the german Beetle that Wolkswagen had such a great success with. (Carla Velosos team Chief is a Beetle so Pixar saluted the beetle as well)

The surname Littleton is a reference to the size of the car and to the little weight, about 600-700 kg. Less than a ton – hence Little TON.

This may struck you as fun trivia at a first glance but when you see it over and over in other cars it is just so much more. The pattern tells you that the team behind the movies are extremeley careful when to pick out wich cars to use, and how they portrait them.

It is an act of love.

Just look at Bruno Motoreau:

It´s a Citroen DS, probably the most classical French car in history. When it first were presented i n Paris 1955 it the attention was extreme. The car was ahead of it´s time in both design and technique. In Sweden people call it ”toad” because of it´s resemblance to the animal.

Most known of the technical details is the hydraulic suspension and the moving headlights.

Great designwork by Pixar and perfect job doing a nice diecast by Mattel.

The next car is also a work of love, but not so much to the cars as to the… boss. John Lassetire:

This is more of a character than a car. It´s based on Pixar´s legendary director John Lasseter. According to this Pixar Wika article 

Cars 2 producer Denise Ream came up with the idea of having John in the film to celebrate Pixar's 25th Anniversary. She says she got the idea from George Lucas' brief appearance in Star Wars: Episode III—Revenge of the Sith, on which she served as the visual effects executive producer.

The car, according to the same source, is 

”an all-American pick up truck. The truck he is most likely modeled after an early 1990s Chevrolet S-10 Pickup Truck. ”

They all seem perfectly happy in my collection!

Just as I am. Perfectly happy. Now I just have to get the missing six!

More pics of my Crew Cheifs here!

Bruno Motoreau - Austin Littleton - John Lassetire

My three new friends. I´ll write more tomorrow but finally the Swedish Mail got the gear together and delivered!
This type of Cars - The Team Chiefs - are in my Top 3 together with The Lemons and The Racecars.

It´s great to see that the cars are made in some kind of celebrating way - to salute nice and important cars from the history.
More about that in the next blogpost. Gotta go to sleep. A and V had a pottering evening at the daycare center. All the parents were invited. Both me and my wife joined in cutting papers, gluing glittering plastic things on paper x-mas trees and decorating candles.
Fun but... well, all you parents out there could imagine. To the rest of you: The sounds from the audience when Lightning McQueen is about to win the Piston Cup for the first time - well it was just a whispering in comparision! :)

The mail must never fail

Remember when I wrote that I won´t tell you what cars I was about to get by mail because that could jinx the mail?
Yes, you probably do, because If you red it it was in yesterdays blogpost.

And what happend?

I must have jinxed it anyway. No cars in the mail today.

That made me unpropotionally dissapointed.

Team Chiefs Cars 2 - incomming!

Oboy! Oboy! Oboy!
I feel like Calvin (in Calvin and Hobbes) when he´s about to get his flamethrower by mail.

Tomorrow I´ll finally get more Team Chiefs in my collection. So far I only have Giuseppe Motorosi, but tomorrow there will be three more!

And above that. Yes above that! I got some really nice cars comming in from the US. But I won´t jinx the US Postal Service or the Swedish Posten by writing to much about the cars until I get them.

Oboy! Oboy! Oboy!

Divided by two = bad conscience

It happens all the time. And I know that all of you with more than one children know what I´m talking about.
Both your kids want your immediate attention. Right know. Right here. No excuses accepted.

And I guess that every parent who has to take two kids by him/herself has to go through the routine of choosing which kid to help first and help most. And I guess that the smaller kid got the larger attention and care.

But with V this is more to the extreme. He needs more care taking. (That´s why we got money from the Swedish state, a small amount every month, it´s like 4 percent of our sallary we can add every month).

But I feel very bad when I think of how much attention I deny A.

He is a smart kid. Almost ready to read by himself. He knows some math. And I can´t help thinking that if I helped him more, spent a little more time training, well, just spent more time with A... He could have been reading early in his fourth year.

And it´s not that I´m wishing he was some Wunderkind, no, even worse is the fact that I miss hanging out with A as much as I want to.
It´s so very often a scream from V... and A has to manage on his own. Watching TV. Playing some computergames on the internet. Or on my iPad.

Some days ago A said it straight out:
- Dad, first you played a lot with V, and now when I want you to play with me, you say you dont have the time!!

Ouch.

Good thing I spent the day at home with only A today. He has some kind of pox and it´s contagious but he´s not really ill. We spent the day watching movies together, drawing som great pictures and then we had panncakes for lunch. Good day!

It´s just a pitty that he has to be sick for this to happen...

V cracks the Brio-code

One of the most classical toy manufactures in Sweden is Brio. High quality tree trains connected with magnets has been one of the most common toys during the last century here.

The railway can be put together in different styles and shapes, you have som basic parts as straights, curves and bridges and then some special parts as road crossings, cranes, bridges that can open and close, train ferry docks and stuff like that.

It´s easy to assemble. It´s like a very simple jigsaw puzzle. On every pice of track, one end has a hole, and the other has a "tag" that connects with the hole in the next piece.
Easy.

Unless, of course, you have a brain disease.

V loves to play with the trains. He even has two motorized ones that he likes to watch as they go round and round on the track I´ve helped him build.

But until yesterday, V never could manage to put two pieces of track together. It just didn´t get through. Frustration. Screaming, and handling the pieces to me... I´ve tried to show him in many ways and as calm as I ever could be. But no.

Then suddenly. Yesterday. As he was playing with the track, all by himself:

And it wasn´t just one time. He connected four or five pieces. Something just clicked inside his head, I guess. Maybe they have done this att his daycare. I know they have it there too.

Anyway. It was great to watch him take this step.

Leak Less Pitty - Secrets from the Past!

Yes, you are right, the package that I got a few days ago and that I showed you in the previous post contained the Leak Less Crew - Pittys and Chief:

It´s from the World of Cars and this 4-pack was from a line called Piston Cup Nights and five more teams are released in this way (Octane Gain, HTB, Nitroade, Bumper Save and Dinoco). Don´t mistake it for the Piton Cup Nights - Teams. Those packs consists of a Racer, one Pitty and a Hauler.

The reason why I bought this (on eBay) was because I wanted the missing pitty. I already had the Team Chief (a.k.a Earl Filter) and two pittys. But something didn´t seem right when I look closely into the new box:

Look at the three pittys. And the two I already got. I got two of the tall one in the middle! (It´s Stacey btw).

Yeah, you can see it clearly here. So instead of getting one new I got two. So I guess it was double the pleassure!


So now I have to sell the Team Chief and two of the tall Pittys. Are you interested?
But first: A family photo before I send the doubles away...

New package from America

I've recieved a new exciting item today. I will open it properly tomorrow but I guess you can see what it is, huh?

Meldorado Finns - Whitewalls and skirts...

... Rides just like a little bit of heaven here on earth!

Yeah I know, Its Eldorado Fins... But how can you resist to put two great diecasts in a song of the ever so great Bruce Springsteen? (Cadillac Ranch, on The River, 1980)

This is my latest add to my collection. Mel Dorado. A talk show host, easy to spot on the glasses, and a great American Car. I´ve always wanted to drive through the Utah desert, listening to Springsteens Darkness on the Edge of Town in a Cadillac convertible.

It´s not a very odd or original dream, but it is on my Bucket List.

So was this diecast. CHECK!

Another site - and three more series

A couple of days ago I found this blog: The Mattel Cars Files

Check it out! It has a lot of good news about Cars Diecasts and it will be me second home from home together with Take Five A Day.

It was there I found out that there now is three more categouires when the 2013 cars are to be released:

In the Airport Adventure we´ll find cars such as Grem with Weapon, Finn McMissile, Security Guard Finn, Airport Mater, Holly Shiftwell and two more cars.

In the Lightning McQueens series we´ll find a lot of Fillmores. No. Of course not. This categourie consists of five different versions of LM. Cactus LM, Muddy LM, Lightning Storm LM, LM with Cone and one more.

And in the Palace Chaos categourie we´ll have to collect 9 cars, among them Holly Shiftwell with Screen and You the Bomb Mater.


You can read more about the nine other categouries here.

Moments of simple happiness

Sometimes I´m a very simple man. Sometimes it don´t take much to satisfy me. Just give me some time alone with my blog and the first taste of this seasons Julmust and the first bite of this years first Saffron Bun - and I will be perfectly content. Or even happy. Yes. Happy.

For the non Swedish readers I better explain Julmust. It´s a kind of beverage we drink this time of year. Christmas is called Jul in Swedish. So that´s the first part of the drink. Must is a word that should remind you of juice but Julmust is a type of soda. It´s carbonated and resembles somewhat Coca Cola. But with more foam.

In Sweden it´s a truth that We Are The Only Country Where Coca Cola Has Been Outrivaled as a Christmas Drink - Because of the Julmust.

I don´t know if it´s true. We have a lot of Coke here even during the winters and the Coke-commercials on TV is a seasonal highlight. But the bottles of Julmust has arrived at my local grocery store and the first sip is always pure magic.

Hence my happy smile on the picture. (And the fact that Mattel made Todd look like that).

V is making noice - and silence

This is based on a true story. Well. The whole blog is a true story so that begining of a post might not be so dramatic as in the movies. But I wanted to try it out anyway.

Recently V has taken more interest in my iPad. He can play some of the Toca-games. Toca Kitchen and Toca Train are his favourites. But lately he want´s to play the same games his brother is playing. And since A is almost 5 it´s hard. And sometimes accidents happens. V fools around and suddenly a savefile is erased. 20 hours of succes could be gone.

A is not happy with how things has turned out. He´s used to play almost whenever he want´s to (quite often) but now my wife and I try to devide time between them in a fair way.

So now there´s a lot of high voices around the iPad. V is standing up for himself. And though he can´t speak he screams and makes signs to us so that we should see if A is not being fair.

That´s good. And very annoying to hear.

We got 100 000 SEK (15 000 $) from our insurance company when we reported V´s disease. Yeah. That´s all we got. It made us aware of all the exceptions in the fine print.

But we concider using some of those money to buy another iPad and fill it with apps for V. There´s actually a few especially for disabled kids. The people behind www.babblarna.se has one, you should check it out! (Don´t mind it´s in Swedish, you and your children will understand it anyway)

In excactly one week V will become 3,5 years. Still not speaking. Only a few words: Mom, Dad. Monkey (it´s almost like dad in Swedish. Wonder why.)

But he has learn to nod and to shake his head. That´s huge. Now he can communicate in a whole new way. All the same... I just can´t help thinking... that I miss so much to hear him talk. Speak.

It will be like to know him as a person. Or... To know him better as a person. And I really want that. Now please!
  

UPDATE ON MY GOALS:

Goals reached:

35 out of 35 Rubber Tires Piston Cup Race Cars

100 % 

11 out of 11   Team Chiefs from Cars 1

100 %

Goals left:

90 %

25 out of 28 Pittys from Cars 1 to collect - 3 left















10 out of 11 Rubber Tires World Grand Prix Race Cars
from Cars 2 to collect - 1 left

95 %

1 out of 10 Team Chiefs from Cars 2 to collect - 9 left

10 %

2 out of 6 Ultimate Chase Cars from Cars 2 to collect - 4 left

Great News for us collectors of Cars Diecast

Mattel has announced a new way to collect their Cars models 2013. All the cars will be devided into 9 (?) new categouries. That is maybe understandable,  this way cars from the first and second movies melt together in the whole line.

One categourie is the World Grand Prix.

This one contains all the racers from Cars 2 and the team chiefs and some of the cars around the race, such as David Hobbscap and Eric Lanely.

Another cute categourie is the Lemons.

According to Mattel, this theme contains 7 cars and of course it´s the bad guys from Cars 2 such as Acer and Grem.

 

The first two themes makes me think, yeah I wanna do this! I´m gonna collect this way from now on! But. The next theme makes me wonder...

The Mater Series...

It will feaure cars such as Race Team Mater, Ivan Mater, Kabuki Mater and You da bomb Mater. Not my bag...

No I would rather go for the Piston Cup Theme!

18 cars from the race in the first Cars movie. But not only Racers and Team Chiefs/Pittys. No, several service cars are included such as Marlon Clutches McKay and race Tow Truck Tom.

Another theme that I don´t know if I´ll care to much about.
The Retro Radiator Springs:

Brand New Mater is a cool car, and maybe I could care for Edwin Kranks. And Mildred Bylane looks like a new release. But why do they put Sally in this categourie?

She should be in the Wheel Well Motel:

Red, Flo, Sheriff, Sarge, Filmore, Ramone... 11 cars in total. But not Sally...

Another theme that I might be intrested in is the one with the least good looking cars in.
The Rust-Eze Racing theme:

Dusty and Rusty are followed by six more rusty cars like Vern, Donna Pits and Jonathan Wrenchwoths. I love when Mattel try hard to make the cars look torn down and worn out.

But the cars that look more like clowns, well that´s not what I seek in a Cars Diecast. So I guess I´ll leave this categourie alone:
Tuners

I already got Boost, Wingo, Snot Rod and DJ. But now they want me to get Suki and Kabuto and 4 more cars to got them all... I´m not convinced.

The cutest theme is the Festival Italiano:

 

Luigi and Guido and 8 more cars. Uncle Topolino and Mama Topolino. Very nice diecasts. I will follow this carefully to see what the other 6 cars will be in this series.

As a whole, I like this new way of order the cars in. I´ve already done almost this when I decided which cars to collect and which ones to leave behind.

So when I´ve reached all my present goals, this is maybe a way to move on.

Shiny Wax Pitty - straight from the US

I just love to order stuff (cars) from America! It´s a beautiful thing this internet invention. Just think about it - 20 years ago this wasn´t possible at all.

A week ago I bought Shiny Wax Pitty on Ebay for 15$ - today he arrived!

A small scratch mark on the hat, yes I see it, but I don´t really care. It´s great to find, to browse around, look and then buy. Then the wait. Looking each day in the mail box. And then finally - a foreign package!

On the other hand... I love going to a store and just pick a car from the shelf and put my money down right there and then. That´s what happened when I bought Tank Coat Pitty (in the magical flowers and cars-store I´ve been telling you about before.)

Actually I first found Carlo Maserati, for something like 19$. That´s what new cars cost here in Sweden... So I bought that one, just to get a quick fix when my car abstinence was too strong.

Damn good looking car!

But as I was standing there, swiping my credit card, my eyes fell on a package of cars behind the counter. So I asked about pittys. Which ones? Tank Coat? Yes. How much? 30$. Ok!

That wasn´t smart. It´s way too expensive. But sometimes I just go wild!

And just look how sweet they look together!

Carlo Maserati and Tank Coat Pitty

I´m feel like I´m going to get sick so this will be a very short message.

These are my newest loot in my garage!

Tank Coat Pitty is my 24th pitty from the first movie, now I´m only 4 pittys away from completeness!

Carlo Maserati is just a cool looking car from the second movie. It looks like I have to collect all the singles from that movie. Just a feeling I got.

Another feeling is this indisposition I got right now... They rang from the daycare center today. A wasn´t feeling well. He had diarrhea. So I got him home early.

Now I feel like shit. In Sweden we have this seasonal sickness called "Vinterkräksjukan". To translate it word by word it would be something like "Winter vomit sickness".

Yes. That´s exactly what it is.

Please let it not be that shit I feel right now...

Moose safari

I took the kids on a roadtrip this weekend. My wife hasn´t been alone in our house since we first moved in, almost three years ago. So she felt it was about time that we left her for some quality time by herself.

Fair enough!

Me, A and V took the car down to my sisters. It is a four our long ride and it´s no pic nic to do it by yourself. V had enough after threee ours. The last 55 minutes I kept singing kids songs over and over again. But when we got to my sister and her husband (not married, what do you call it then?) it was sure worth the trouble.

Yesterday was a smash hit. We went for a short car ride into the woods of Småland (Small Country to translate it word by word) and there, in the middle of nowhere - there was a Moose Safari!

Wow! They are big!

Especially german people like the Swedish Moose. A lot of small houses in Sweden has been bought by Germans who love our nature and of course we had some Germans on the ride in the Moose Park.
They seem almost babyishly fond of moose, the Germans...

We gave them apples and potatoes. (Not the Germans, the moose!)
A dared to give them from his hands, V did not. But both the kids were extremely thrilled!

And... well, so was I!

Two hobbies - two worlds

There´s a competition I can´t win. A comparison I´m bound to loose.

My wife has a hobby. It´s nothing at all like mine.

Her hobby gives her fresh air. It gives her dirt under the finger nails. It boosts the real estate value of ours. It makes our world look better. It produces oxygen. Yes her hobby even creates life. How could I ever compete with that?

My wife loves our garden. She loves gardening. She also has a blog where she writes about the progress, the changes and her running projects in the green place she has turned our small back yard to.

Meanwhile in a garage nearby...

I arrange my cars. I build some lighting arrangements. I put the cars in different orders. But mostly I take photos and writes on my blog. Or looks online for new cars.

My wife makes coffee and we drink it IN HER HOBBY. We invite friends over and barbeque in her hobby. And she often plants new flowers or vegetables together with our kids. In her hobby.

Meanwhile in a garage nearby...
A certain dad closes the doors to the collection of toys his own kids mustn´t see.

But I love it anyway. A small world of my own. Where I can breathe and power up.

It´s the same with my wifes world. Only... She invites the rest of us...