Great Britain & Northern Ireland Finds (Part 1)

[boogity]

can anyone explain this, since finding ggg, kubuto and nick in tescos a week or so back , I havnt seen any of these, anywhere, since, why?

checked tks yesterday, nought, mind you did spot a nice wee book on the wacky racers, the contents of which could cover your second specialist subject on mastermind, assuming of course you take cars as your first and swot up on general knowledge

[boogity]

bought a disney store twin pack dinoco mcq/dj, very nice too, it was down to 8 quid, however it was only a selected few that were reduced, was told that it was only the older ones that were reduced, now correct me if i,m wrong but that particular pack is pretty recent, the only examples that were actually reduced were on a secondary display not the main one, so it was easy to miss,funnily enough the bus was reduced to 8 quid from 10 as well, once I,d told them it had always been 8 quid, panic stations then set in and someone was despatched to sort it
from what I could see parenst were homing in on the twin packs and leaving mattels precious 1.55 stock untouched, lets face it priced at 7 quid for the silver ones and a fiver for the normal stock, who could blame them!

[madbob]

Went to about 20 different places over the weekend, nothing about at all. Even metallic racers seem to have now gone, who would of thought at Xmas that even by the end of Feb we still would not have seen any 2013 cases.

[yuffie]

who would of thought at Xmas that even by the end of Feb we still would not have seen any 2013 cases.

i think anyone who knows how the uk is treated by mattel

with all due respect to belgium is there really a bigger market there to warrant new cars appearing there first?

[niftynigel]

Another couple of collectors contacted Mattel UK regards the launch date for the 2013 mainline standard singles, deluxe and doubles. They were told the same as me, the end of March at the earliest. That's Mattel's date for shipping, so unless stores get stuff directly from Mattel, expect 2013 stuff to hit the shops in early April, a full FIVE months after the US, FOUR months after Canada and THREE months after Australia and the rest of Europe.

The UK is the biggest toy market outside of the US. Indeed, I saw some figures somewhere stating that the UK was nearly as big as the whole of the rest of Europe put together in terms of units shipped. I suppose that's why we have a Mattel UK as opposed to coming under Mattel Europe? Shame that!

[Junior]

Niftynigel - Just a question as your knowledge on Mattels distribution of Cars is way superior to mine. Will these cars be available to buy in factory sealed cases here in the UK the way you can do it in the US? And - if so, how many will be in a case?

[niftynigel]

Junior - That's an interesting question!

I have asked Mattel that question before now and initially they said that I could! I then asked them how I go about it and they said that I needed to be a 'bona fide' trader, i.e. I have to be a registered business (not necessarily having an account with Mattel as I would imagine that's it's easy to set one up - My parents when they were alive [a long time ago] had a shop and had loads of accounts with suppliers and cash and carries).

I'm not a registered business, so that's the end of that! If you are self employed that may help you!

I did ask a local shop with a Mattel account if they could order on my behalf, when Mattel UK were touting a super case with the last four cars plus the silver racers from Kmart 9. Mattel said that they couldn't guarantee the actual case number that would be supplied and the shop was going to charge me a price of Ł105 + VAT. The shop were going to charge their normal rate (Ł5.25 per car x24) which included their normal 30% mark up. I thought was expensive for only nine or ten cars, so I decided not to proceed and in the event, the super case was cancelled anyway! There are usually 24 standard singles in a case.

[madbob]

I suppose that's why we have a Mattel UK as opposed to coming under Mattel Europe? Shame that!

Couldn't of put it any better... April they say. Oh dear sounds like they did not order the first wave or it sold out at warehouse before they could. So its GGG case and the silver racers until then, I would also say that then means its likely we missed the first wave of 2013 cars which RIP was a part of. In April I might contact them to find out more on whats coming... no point until then.

[boogity]

ru5ty, the erik was in tescos not asda you wally!
strange thing was it was just sitting on the shelf surrounded with the normal stuff crying out come to papa!
erik - the number plate is the same as nick and on the base you can see where the wording fiat tm has been erased, nice car mind

ru5ty, have you got max schnell yet?

found the pannini stickers, 1.99 for the album and 21 stickers

disney, selected twin packs still at 8 quid, this time its carla and rip! also spotted a nice cars mug, new design

tk max nought

tru metallic francesco down to 4.99

[daul_p]

Finally a find.....Nick Cartone in Sainsbury's Taplow tonight. Ah it feels good to see something new in a shop. Left the racers and the Bindo though.

[niftynigel]

I'm in earlier than expected. I was at a concert, The Union at the Academy, Islington. It was cut short during the third song of the headline act due to the lead singer having the flu! In 350 concerts, I've never experienced that! The old GLC cut the power when Spider overran the curfew at Hammersmith Odeon back in 1984, that being the nearest!

Anyway, Madbob, I think Mattel UK as the client asks for a certain amount of products and they have to be booked in the production process. As everything has already been made before for other clients, Mattel US, Mattel Europe it should all be OK, we just end up getting case 997P (with Rip) about three months after the rest of Europe.

The way I see it is that Disney Stores are insistent that they are getting the case with Rip in it (997P unless the UK starts with different assortments from day one?). DS were getting exclusive cases towards the end of last year, so that scenario may continue with Cars 2013. It would be good if that did happen as that means that there would always be two simultaneous cases in the shops meaning more cars to collect.

Europe actually missed out on the first case. Europe's case 997P was the same as the US case B. There were four cars in US case A that haven't so far got a scheduled reissue in later cases (up to US case G).

Mattel UK gave me a provisional case release schedule. However, that was dependent on Cars 2013 being launched on 2 Feb 2013. Only the silver racers were out by then. There were supposed to be 12 case assortments through 2013, with last coming out in November. My guess is that DS may have got four exclusive cases.

Quite clearly that's not going to happen now. It's not the end of the world, but I think it's highly unlikely that we'll see the whole 2013 series in the UK. If Mattel UK could only just about muster about 20 new cars (maybe 44 if you include all straight carded versions), then what chance have they got for about 80 singles, ten deluxe and ten double packs this year?

One way or another we did get all the deluxe and double packs for Cars 2, when the US didn't see the final two deluxe or three double packs!

Given the size of the markets, all of these should have been released in both markets! The UK should also have got the Take Flight series. They'd have sold like hot cakes, I'm sure!

[boogity]

well tescos have reduced the stunt racers, the cars are 5.75 and the haulers are 9.75, bagged myself a sal, the playset thingy is reduced too , but cant rem the price
spotted an outer on the top shelf, inside was kabuto, ggg, nick and eric, as I was in a good mood I took em out and displayed them on the shelves!

sainsburys had the usual dross

[boogity]

cripes that last post was numero 900!

[niftynigel]

boogity -

Your last three posts are all showing up as 901 to me! I could never fathom the numbering system!

Can someone explain? Is it, if you post an article or two or three within say a minute, they all county as one?

[boogity]

as big jim madowell would say ....hol the front page....

2013 card backs are here at last, found an unopened cars2 clipstrip box on the top shelf in our tescos, opened it and low and behold, acer with guns, petey pacer, holley with screen, cactus mcq, sarge, ramone, dusty rusteze, king, took what I wanted and put the clip strips out

ru5ty - silver max and petey are planked behind a row of rev and go mcqs, hope there still there, will check thurs morning