Disney Pixar CARS: The New Jeff Gorvette Chaser
The Disney Store has a new Jeff Gorvette “Chaser.”
Great July 4th paint scheme …
Thanks for the heads up, “Alberto A.”
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10 April 2015
11 Comments
Wait, what? My kids ARE the collectors and as a parent I do routinely drive around to five different stores looking for what they want and that includes both Cars and Transformers. Besides, pit crews and haulers aren’t just for collectors. I fail to see the point of sniping at one another over these things.
The fact that you’re on this site shows that you aren’t the average parent when it comes to toys. Most take their kids to the toy store, let them pick something out and that’s it. Not that there is anything wrong with that.
How many parents are checking the internet to keep an eye out for new character releases? Don’t be fooled into thinking ever parent are like us.
I would also like to apologize if it came across as snippy. I just think it’s important that we remember that these toys aren’t for us (big picture).
I see people talk all the time about they shouldn’t continue Planes line, but then Cars has stuff like this?!?! Why would I buy this, it wasn’t in the movie even?
Who cares… its a Disney Store product. They need to get the planes out of the Walmarts and Targets… clogging the shelves for space that could be used for haulers or pit crew sets.
Except it has been repeatedly shown via actual products released, that Mattel isn’t making haulers or pit crew sets as you would wish them to. Give it up already, seriously. Mattel makes toys for kids, shiny toys, colorful toys. Collectors are not the market of Mattel – though they do have Matty.com for us.
Exactly. It’s not like Transformers where they release things specifically marketed to collectors. Maybe when our kids are in their 20-30’s there might be a large enough collectors market, but right now that’s not the case.
Lets not forget these are children’s toys. Remember that some 5 year old may have enjoyed that cars toy, but couldn’t because some collector bought all of them and their parents aren’t going to drive to 5 different stores to look for it.
And if those toys don’t sell (like the planes or lenticulars) then what? At least collector-focused items do sell.
And why did they produce those items in the first place if there was no market for them or so you say?
It’s a simple balancing act of how much they can make, and how much they sell. They could make every single unique hauler, at $15 to $25 each, and flood the market. Or they could produce and ship ten individual cars that take the same space as one hauler and sell them at $5 each = $50.
Add in that toys for kids are impulse buys, and the $5 sale is easier than a $20 sale most of the time.
Next, if the stuff is such peg warmers, why are there not warehouses full of pegwarmers? They did all sell, they flooded the market, kids still bought them while the cherry cars got scooped up first. Last I heard, there had been over 33 million Cars made and sold — so let’s assume the marketing folks at Mattel sort of know what they are doing. We see peg-warmers (stuff we collectors don’t want anymore, we got ours), the store merely sees a full inventory of toys.
Plus in the end, it’s their dime, they get to decide what to make and sell, not the collectors — because collectors will always want the stuff that is rare and different, and only interests us. Mattel wants to turn a profit.
If the lack of haulers really bugs you, buy the Chinese knock-offs — I have a full set, problem solved. Since we never saw most of the haulers in the films, most kids don’t miss them at all.
I agree with the importance of keeping key characters on the shelves… and yes most Cars characters eventually do sell. For some reason you want to completely discount the collector market of Cars diecast… look at all the interest in the 08-10 era where there was K-Day, haulers, pit crew sets. Read how much interest posts here on T5 got in those days… how does it look now?
And what bothers me about the haulers is not the fact that I can’t get all 36… but that there are (and have been for the past 15 months) 3 haulers on the shelves right NOW at Wal-Mart… yet Mattel, for some reason, chooses to not throw a Gasprin or Shiny Wax in and just re-release Mack, Gray, and Wally for the 100th time. I would even take the Chick or RPM haulers at this point… just something different!
..and now that I think about it the Bumper Save hauler would be a PERFECT re-release due to the fact that kids can get both the racer and the pitty this year… but its not to be.
Again, you disregarding everything mack said about collectors vs kids.
I’d like to see haulers as well, but that $5 impulse buy isn’t gonna turn into a $25 impulse buy very often.
Will they sell? Probably. But you have to consider that it may not be worth it for Mattel. I work for an engineering/construction firm that deal with multi-million dollar projects. Our projects are normally between $50-$100+ million, when we see projects come up that are less than $30 million, we don’t even bother to bid unless we know there’s a larger project coming from the client and we just want to develop a relationship. Would we make money on the $20 million project? Absolutely, but it’s not worth tying up our people on that project.
Same thing might be happening at Mattel.