Yep, it’s real and it’s almost here.

Clear your calendar and your credit cards.

Make sure your broadband bill is paid and you have a backup generator come May 20, 2008.

Make sure the cat or dog hasn’t frayed your keyboard USB connector.

West Coasters like me will have to have our caffeine injected and ready to start typing and clicking by 9 AM … but East Coasters can meander in at noon.

Briefly, the price is $299.00 (+ 12.95 S&H).

Limited to 1,000.

Yes, you need a membership in the Red Line Club ($24.95+shipping) and GET THAT TAKEN CARE OF before May 20, 2008 – you want avoid any problems.

You must FIRST sign up for the Hot Wheels Club (free) – then click on SHOP.

Yes, you can only buy ONE per RLC membership …

… But you can buy FIVE RLC memberships at the SAME MAILING ADDRESS!

BUT you will need 5 emails addresses and you have to log off before logging back on.

Any other questions, we think we pretty much answered any questions you might have in our earlier posts – here, here & here.

(Whoa, we started talking about these 6 months ago?!)

Good luck one and all and may the best 1,000 of us get as may as we want, need, desire and crave 🙂

For those of you who plan on opening their set, may you live to be a thousand and be blessed with harmony, wisdom, beauty and a Red Ransberg … for those who just intend to rush onto eBay, may your mouse click and return key stop functioning 🙂 … BTW, RLC items are NOT allowed to be pre-sold on eBay so you can report any sellers who pre-list and pre-sell the set starting today or until it is actually IN HAND. At that point, Mattel no longer restricts (re)selling a RLC item …

After you sign up, you can read more details about the set HERE … (there is a typo in Mattel’s list – Gask-It is #80, not the third #84)

Our first un-boxing photos are HERE.

If you’d like to send us yours when you get the set and open it – be sure and email them to us or send us a link!

For those of you are undecided on whether to buy, it’s $8.30 a CAR not including S&H, quite a bit of inflation from the last exclusive Red Line box set of $5.51 a CAR.

For those keeping track, here are the Piston Cup CARS out:

Lightning McQueen
Chick Hicks
Dale Jr.*
Gasprin
The King
Leak Less
Nitrorade
No Stall
RPM
Octane Gain
Tow Cap
Vinyl Toupee

NOTE – the Speedway set Dale Jr. is a variant.

Shiny Wax #82 & Sparemint #93 are announced as 3-packs plus we have seen Trunk Fresh #34 as a launcher so 14 (if you’re a variant collector) or 15 of the 36 CARS are available or will soon be available in other packs … as people have asked, does it mean every Piston Cup Race CAR will be released in some form or another … Probably, possibly, maybe … yes, likely but will they all be available in 2008? Highly unlikely but anything is possible. Yes, that’s no answer but that’s the Mattel answer.

It seems that Mattel is aiming to use the single cards to sell the highest visibility CARS and CARS that are the most interesting looking might get a solo card release – so I imagine that some of the Piston Cup CARS might get solo card releases like Tach-o-Mint, Mac iCar (Mattel is calling it the Apple Car) and a few others but some are frankly not all are that visually exciting (of course, to us, we’ll take anything) so most will make appearances as 3-packs with their crew chief and Movie Moments (okay, the Apple CAR is more likely to be a Movie Moment packed with Mike or something …) but does that mean everything will come out at some point – that’s probably the plan but will it be 100% certain? No … There is no way of telling ,,, just as most guesses were on the lower end scale of $249 and not $299 … so anything, everything and nothing is possible, impossible or probable … the bottom line is Mattel doesn’t even know … but they would never admit that 😉

So, now we know pricing – you in? You out? You want to vent?

ADDED THOUGHTS BASED ON COMMENTS: The Motor Speedway is its own unique entity. We already can see that in addition to  a couple three packs announced (Shiny Wax, SpareMint), there is also a photo pointed out by reader “Jeff” from HK that a four pack of LM, King, Chick & Re-volting ($15.99? $19.99?) is ready to go … so it certainly appears that the CARS themselves are as “exclusive” as the WM CARS were “exclusives.” They are exclusive unique to this packaging, time, pricing and place (in other words, Mattel is the date who loves you forever until the Sun comes up and hey, it’s another forever 😉 ) … buying this set assures you of having 25 (including Dale Jr variant) Piston Cup racers in your hands in a couple weeks (plus the ones you already own). The bottom line is whether that is worth $300+ to you.  Just be aware that in a month’s time, only 22 might left unique and that still leaves us with Toyfair announcements and the holidays where last year we saw some 20+ CARS released between summer and the end of the year so while it’s unlikely we will see all of them but maybe 8 more Piston Cup racers? So, eventually, all might be re-released but does that detract from the set itself? That is your call. The short term future of this line can be predicted but a year from now, who knows. So, $300+ guarantees the Piston Cup racers in hand in two weeks, after that, Mattel might flirt, tease, disappoint you, cause you grief or make you wonder what you ever saw … 🙂 but hey, Mattel never said they were a cheap date … at least you’ll always have May 20, 2008 …