Oh, is that buying the Motor Speedway of the South thing today?

Tick, tick, tick …

Are you in or out?

Here’s a song to listen to while you decide.

“CarsMama” notes now all the individual CARS are now available in high res mode at the Club.

Be sure and report in after the zero hour if you decided to buy, how did it go and or if you decided to pass …

Are you hiding from your boss? 🙂

Are you Outlook-booked with no chance for anyone to edit between 8:30 and 1:30 today?

It all went pretty smoothly. I didn’t have my credit card info locked in so I even typed it in and took time to get screen shots – think it was less than 4 minutes. Hope it all went/goes smoothly for you.

9:15 AM (West Coast time) – still available.

From all the comments – so far so good …

9:20 AM … 20 minutes and still available – okay, who’s thinking of buying a 2nd membership?

9:30 AM … Still available. It’s a dog! SELL! SELL! SELL! (just kidding! 🙂 )

9:45 AM … Still available. Well, Mattel certainly was prepped for this so good for that – when they seem to have pre-loaded the page last week presuming a sell-out, I was a little worried but they seem to have gotten all the servers & programming in order so – great.

They ship pretty quickly. This should leave the warehouse in the next few days (from Texas or Wisconsin – if you lived in either states, you also had sales tax) – those that paid extra for 2-day shipping might even get it by Friday. For those who paid priority, if you live closer to the Midwest, you might also get it by Friday … for ground, again, those in the Midwest should get the quickest – maybe Monday? (This is presuming they ship out today or tomorrow).

10:00 AM – an hour and still AVAILABLE. I’m starting to get hungry – do I leave the computer? BTW, in the confirmation email, don’t let this alarm you …

“Your order is being processed and will ship as quickly as possible, pending product availability and credit approval.”

That’s their standard legalese in case they accidentally stack 2-million Speed Racer Barbie’s in front of the CARS pallet. Oh, and be sure and either note your confirmation number or print out that page – just in case you have to follow up for some reason.

10:15 AM – I’m definitely going to pass out from hunger … so let me know if it sells out in the next 20 minutes … here’s a tidbit from John, one of the HWC Club Administrators regarding the set:

“This item came out of a meeting right before the CARS movie was released (like two years ago – there’s a long story maybe I’ll tell you if I see you at the Convention) and we were asked personally by John Lasseter (head guy at Pixar) to make a set that included all of the Piston Cup racers. It’s taken a long time to get it done, but I have to say this is one of the best sets HWC has ever made (even though it’s not even a HW set).”

10:22 AM – maybe we should take this HW’s guy’s “advice” on the HW Forum … “I was in K-Mart today and I purchased the #52 car Leak Less,#64 RPM, and the #28 Notroade. They look just like the cars in the Motor Speeday of the South Set. The Store Magt. said they were putting the rest out later tonight. I only paid $3.49 a car!!!!!! What a big savings and I WILL HAVE THE WHOLE SET FOR LITTLE OF NOTHING!!!!!”

10:35 AM – Still Available. Sorry to be late with this notice but straight from the HW Shop Website:

“Can I bill my order to an international address?
We can accept international billing; however, we are prohibited from selling to Cuba, Iran, Libya, or Sudan. All orders are in U.S. currency. The ship-to address for the item must be within the U.S., its territories, and Canada only. If you have a friend or family member in the U.S. who can receive shipments for you, enter their shipping address in the ‘ship to’ fields and your billing address in the ‘bill to’ fields. We will ship the item to your friend or family member, who must assume the responsibility of shipping the item on to you.”

10:45 AM – BTW, it should be noted that Mattel is selling 1,000 sets – but presumably based on the Lasseter story above, there are additional sets being given away to people at Pixar, Disney & Mattel … that set you saw the unboxing pics of did not seem to be numbered but will re-verify once I or someone gets it. So, it seems the RL versions are numbered but perhaps the “extras” are not …

11:00 AM – two hours and still available … now you can with a clear conscious buy 5-10 … everyone who really, really, really, really wanted one has one … so BUY, BUY, BUY. First person to send me a picture of 10 Motor sets stacked in the living room wins a prize! 🙂 … or the first person who can line up ten Apple CARS 🙂

11:20 AM – 5th eBay set up for auction. I’d buy a second set for $.99 🙂 … here are some conversions for our overseas friends – with the dollar not so high, eBay is a “bargain” if you can’t buy it direct …

1 Dollar to Euro 0.6385
1 Dollar to British Pound 0.5079
1 Dollar to Australian Dollar 1.0435

11:28 AM – “Chuck” asks an interesting question – “if you order early, do you get a lower number?”

It will be interesting to see what kind of effort Mattel makes … but if they are already boxed in the typical Mattel cardboard (as we saw in the unboxing photo), there’s no indication on the outside of the box so it will all depend how the shipment was stacked to be wrapped on the pallet – was the factory careful to build the base with higher number boxes so the first ones removed from the top are the low numbers? But there’s no guarantee which pallets get rolled where, maybe they split packing for shipping by geography? So, by chance, everyone in the Midwest gets the first 500 numbers? As we get them in, people can report in and we can see if it’s by region, some order or totally random (I suspect it will be the last).

11:29 or 11:30 AM

SOLD OUT

Hope you got yours!

Mattel – $300,000 in 150-minutes …

Thanks for contributing all your comments and thoughts.

Can’t wait to start the I’VE GOT MINE thread 🙂

And, now the non-numbering number controversy …