Mattel Disney Pixar CARS Diecast: Kmart CARS Day No More – End of the Era
Kmart has announced:
“Kmart will no longer run the Cars Collector Events in June and October … No mail in offer is planned for 2014 for either Cars, Planes or Planes Fire & Rescue. Thanks.”
How will you choose to remember?
End of an era …
Imagine the Kmart CARS Day We Missed Out On …
Silver Sparemint Event Day
Silver Spare-0-Mint Event Day
Piston Cup Racers with Blue LightsDay
Leftover Racers From Kmart CARS Day 1-10 Day
Piston Cup Racers Throwback Tin Tires Day
Francesco Bernoulli Throwback Pelting of Matty Mattel Day
WGP Racers with Slim Jim Tires
“Is Today the Day We Have Diecasts to Sell?” Day
Inflammable/Flammable Piston Cup Racers
Why does this event continue elsewhere? The problem is that Kmart was the perfect retailer in 2006-2007. In addition to doing the HW events already, they had just enough stores to make it work and be “weak” enough that Target or Walmart didn’t care that much. Now, with 50% of their stores closed, the distribution doesn’t really work anymore. TRU is too small (only about 700 stores) nor will they commit to a minimal purchase and they seem understaffed as it is – they are probably also unwilling to commit to 1 to 2 employees to staff this event. TRU seems to be the perfect partner for this if TRU could get their act together (though you could easily accuse Mattel of the same …). Target simply does not seem interested in hosting any vendor events – it clutters up the store but numbers wise and geo-distribution wise, Target makes sense … though it might tick off WM so that might not be worth it. Walmart is simply too large to do – they have 8,000 stores, it doesn’t make for much of a “limited” exclusive – and if you cherry pick stores, it’s just not worth the time and effort as some stores would want to do and others would not – for what? Even at the old levels of 15-20 cases per store, for WM – drawing in an extra 30 customers is not worth the effort for Wm unlike KM.
metroxing
20 March 2014
Disney Pixar CARS, Disney Pixar CARS 3, Mattel Disney Pixar Diecast CARS, Mattel Disney Pixar Diecast CARS 3
17 Comments
At both the first and final Kmart Day we had the first ticket drawn — fond memories
My boys remember these events warmly. I remember them with a mixture of excitement and trepidation. I have Take Five A Day to thank for letting me know about these, as the stores often did not advertise, or did not advertise effectively. Thanks Met & Tiz!
As the events went on, twice a year, it was just poor marketing and poor upkeep of store staff. Everyone directly involved knew about it, but most street level stores did not or didn’t care.
Mattel does NOT know all. Had they “kept up” with the collector and NOT the Hotwheels thought process, it may have survived. Look at the Rv’s. They got made and BOOM they sold. Haulers – Got sold. This is about “characters” in a movie versus, what dies they can keep reusing.
It was suggested several times by BMW – myself and many many others….
TELL Mattel what you WANT for YOUR customer base instead of Mattel telling YOU. That never happened to any good resolution. Stores KNOW what sells. Mattel sees END BULK results, not the whole picture.
BMW and I were even on the VIP end when they asked about hotdogs and coke/ etc. Great Idea! but yet, that too never happened.
Our local KMart store was in the process of closing when the last Cars Collector’s event would have occurred. While I had attended the events religiously there from the very first one, the offering for that last event was so poor that I decided to forgo traveling 20 miles or more to the nearest store to participate. I had hoped that things might improve enough to encourage me to drive the distance for the next event, but I am now resigned to the fact that there will be no more.
Same here, I missed the last event thanks to my store’s closure.
the person that went through the glass in the animated gif – that’s what happens when you squeeze through tight spaces at high speed. The plant was placed there to deter these things from happening.
It IS a shame but, not a surprise unfortunately.
Mattel did NOT care about the terrible selection of event offerings and K-Mart did NOT care about stores NOT getting event product or even NOT participating in the events at all.
The K-Mart employees certainly could not care less about the events!
The “month long promotion event” was a total joke!!!
Never did see or find any of the exclusive deluxe during that month or after?!?
I enjoyed the anxiety of making sure i got what I needed at the events…
Fortunately, I was the only one there for most of the events…I missed the very first one, but walked into the store and got everythig I needed later that day…
I helped a lot of collectors who did not have access to Kmart…I’ll miss that part mostly
Still have a complete carded set of al 35 RT PC cars…anyone?
this is mattels fault period
they have screwed kmart so many times I’m not surprised they ended it
it does not make me happy to see it end though
they didn’t properly mark the cases so many events had no cars on the day
and the case assortments were terrible so many kmart cars hung around the stores for years after the event
and how many first to market cars did they end up sending to other retailers first and left kmart holding the bag
Not surprised, but still saddened by this. The early events were such fun.
TRU does lots of events like this for other toys, so they should be able to do these. They do Disney Infinity collectors events, Beyblade tournaments, etc.
Haven’t been interested in these since Cars 2. They could have been great too. oh well… R.I.P. Collector’s Event.
Too bad, we enjoyed what there was of it.
What does this mean for Jungle Miles Axlerod?
(MET: Jungle Miles was only a First-to-Market and the last two FTM items did not go FTM to Kmart anyway so it should arrive not in the next case but maybe the one after?).
I just got a Jungle Miles from China, so he’ll be coming in eight to twelve weeks yet …
Met hit the nail on the head. Mattel didn’t give Kmart Collector event Cars that collectors really wanted since the beginning of Cars 2.
Each event got worse on the choices. Repeats of the same Mcqueen in 2 back to back events Mattel? That was ridiculous. If you bought cases you ended up with tons of the same Mcqueen. And Gold Rip instead of Silver at the last event? What was Mattel thinking? No offer of rubber tire Rip either to complete the RT Racers from Cars 2.
To be honest I’m glad it’s over. There aren’t any Kmarts around me anymore so I missed out on the last event. Hopefully now all the retailers can get the “super exclusive” cars.
The first five events were EVENTS. Anything since Cars 2 came out were big disappointments. Heck, nothing even happened in-store last June. Kmart should at least offer special cases online. Oh well.