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In the Respect the Classics series, I've featured Cars from the first movie extensively... in my opinion, the Cars from Cars have had an opportunity to become classics... The Cars2 movie and Cars have only been out about 14 months - not quite enough time to determine yet if they are classics or not... Due to Mattel's distribution and case assortments, we've seen a lot of pegwarmers - it has been a struggle to find new Cars the last several months.
I've also seen the first Cars movie over 150 times - my grandson Austin would want to watch Cars every time that he came over... I've seen Cars2 3 times in its entirety... My wife and I took all 3 grandchildren to see Cars2 when it debuted in the theater on June 24, 2011... all 3 of my grandchildren wanted to see a different movie that day when we went to see Cars2... my wife put her foot down and told her that we were all seeing Cars2 for Papaw... we did... they haven't wanted to watch Cars2 at home since... and I've fallen asleep a couple of times that I've put it on to watch.
I think we are starting to see that some of the Cars2 Cars are classics... Brent Mustangburger... Darrell Cartrip... Rod Torque Redline... the various Pacers and Gremlins and Trunkovs - Cars that were made using actual cars as the design... Leland Turbo... and the 11 World Grand Prix racers... I think it's going to turn out that the Kmart silver racer series Cars are going to be classics... it may turn out that the Super Chase Racers are going to be classics once we get through the marketing hype.
I also enjoy great paint jobs... in my opinion, the Metallic Paint (Ransburg) Cars are classics based on their paint job... in this installment of Respect the Classics, we'll take a look at the Metallic Paint Cars from Cars2.
Toys R US Metallic Paint Racers
As of this date, 5 of the World Grand Prix racers featuring metallic paint have been released at Toys R US stores... however, only 3 of them have been released at Toys R US stores in the US... Here's a picture showing all 5 racers opened:
The Metallic Paint racers retail for $6.99 plus tax in the US... The first racer released in this series was Lightning McQueen:
It made sense to me that McQueen was the first one released... after all, he is the star of the show as far as race Cars are concerned...
Next up was Jeff Gorvette:
Jeff came out a few months after McQueen... as Jeff is based on the NASCAR drive Jeff Gordon, it made sense to me that Mattel capitalized on his name...
Within a month of finding Jeff Gorvette in stores, I found Nigel Gearlsey:
I wasn't expecting to find Nigel as quickly as I did... but when we did, many of us thought that perhaps we'd get one metallic paint racer a month... that would be great - finding a new Car once a month helps keep enthusiasm for a product line... I really liked the looks of Nigel - I liked the green.
Sadly, there have been no new metallic paint racers in the US since.
A few weeks ago my friend Christina from Germany posted a photo on our PixarCarsDiecast.com Facebook page - she'd found Metallic Paint Miguel Camino and Francesco Bernoulli at Toys R US stores in Germany... we've helped each other out a few times in the past but it had been awhile... this time I needed (wanted) Miguel and Francesco... she wanted Kmart 8 Cars and Hobby Lobby display cases... we worked out a trade... I received the Cars from her last week...
Francesco Bernoulli:
As BluCollection stated in a recent video, only the red on Francesco is metallic... still, it's a great looking Car... the bottom of the Francesco metallic racer is black, not white:
Courtesy of lovemini, here's a photo of a metallic paint Francesco with a white base:
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/...2/DSCF4831.jpg
(Photo used by permission of lovemini... thank you, lovemini)
Here's Miguel Camino:
I would have liked for more of Miguel to be metallic paint than the gold... still, he looks better in person than he did in early photos I'd seen of him when he was found in Canada.
We've seen one more Toys R US racer in metallic paint so far - Raoul Caroule is available as a prototype... lovemini posted a picture of metallic Raoul a few months ago... Thank you, lovemini, for allowing me to add a couple of your photos to this article.
(Photo used by permission of lovemini... thank you, lovemini)
What could be better than 5 TRU metallic paint racers? How about 6 TRU metallic paint racers...
(Photo used by permission of lovemini... thank you, lovemini)
And what could be better than 6 metallic paint TRU racers? How about a full set of 11, including Rip Clutchgoneski...
Hopefully we'll see more of these metallic paint racers at Toys R US stores in the US soon... I was able to acquire them from Christina, but at $9.42 plus postage they are more expensive than they are in the US... Since we haven't seen new ones recently in the US, and the 10 pack of racers was only available at TRU stores for less than a month, I wonder if they'll release the 10 pack of racers as metallic paint racers... we'll have to see... but I definitely want Raoul Caroule, Lewis Hamilton, Shu Todoroki, Max Schnell, Carla Veloso, and Rip Clutchgoneski in metallic paint.
The DK Cars Character Encyclopedia Lightning McQueen
Several months ago, we learned about a DK Cars Character Encyclopedia coming out sometime during the summer of 2012... I ordered mine in April and received it in the mail yesterday, July 14... in addition to being a great reference resource for Cars fans with great photos, it contains an exclusive Metallic Paint version of the Hudson Hornet Piston Cup Lightning McQueen:
I'd received a version of this Car a few months ago from a friend in China... here are a couple of pictures showing the Metallic Paint Lightning McQueens:
Do you see the difference between my prototype and the one in the encyclopedia?
Other Metallic Paint Cars
There has been one other metallic paint Car released so far from the Cars2 movie... it's probably my favorite metallic paint Cars2 Car as of now...
The metallic paint Finn McMissile was released as a bonus during the 2011 D23 convention... people were not happy to see the Deluxe Submarine Finn McMissile released as the special D23 Car... so Mattel added the Ransburg Finn to appease collectors and increase sales... Did it work? Maybe a little...
We saw the Ransburg Finn McMissile released again in November 2011 as part of the Walmart exclusive Cars2 Blu-ray Combo Pack:
Here's a close up showing the Finn from the D23 convention and the Walmart combo pack:
It's the same Finn... so I haven't opened my Walmart combo pack... I opened a Best Buy combo pack in order to watch the Cars2 movie.
The Walmart exclusive Cars2 Blu-ray combo pack was $29.97 plus tax... I stopped at Walmart at 7 am, before going to work, the day that that the movie was released on Blu-ray and DVD.
Disney Store Cars2 Chase Cars
There have been a few Disney Store Cars2 Chase Cars released; many of them have been metallic paint racers...
Stars and Stripes Lightning McQueen:
Lightning Mater:
Francesco Bernoulli:
There may be others and I'll add photos.
In Conclusion
I am hopeful that we will see additional Cars2 Cars in metallic paint... I'd like to see the rest of the World Grand Prix racers, including Rip Clutchgoneski... I think they could easily release metallic paint versions of Brent Mustangburger, Darrell Cartrip (already released in Cars), David Hobbscap, Holley Shiftwell (the purple would be awesome), Rod Torque Redline, and Leland Turbo...
As always, thanks for reading and posting comments...
Chris
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