There was some confusion about the 4 different kind’s of Van available … the simplest is just to take a snapshot of a page from our Complete Open Checklist 2006 to 2011 issue.

Van – first released in the World of CARS series (2008) wearing a snarky expression.

Van returned as a “Night Skyline” lenticular in 2010. Unlike every other re-release of the classic fixed-eyes CARS returning/re-released as a lenticular, he is only character with a different mouth expression.

Concurrently at the time, he was also released as a Toon – “Van San,” wearing the scared mouth expression from the Tokyo Mater short.  Though as you can see, he is green and not teal. At the time, you could argue they re-used the same facial expression on lenticular “Van” to save a few dollars.

Not long after in 2010, they also released “Van with Sticker” (lenticular CHASE) sporting a bumper sticker on the passenger side of the rear bumper with the words NICE BUTTE.* He has the mouth expression of the original “Van.”

So with the third release of “Van” in 2010, it does make sense they changed the mouth expression of “lenticular Van,” so he was different than (lenticular) “Van with Sticker.” Otherwise, people might wonder why would they would buy a lenticular character that re-appeared a few weeks later only with a bumper sticker as the only difference. At least this way, the third Van release of the year would look different though clearly, most people didn’t even notice.

* It also didn’t help that most of “Van with Sticker” released were error ones without the bumper sticker.

So, to recap every detail:

Van – Teal, fixed eyes, snarky mouth expression, rear license plate 47-M4U.

Van (lenticular) – Teal, lenticular eyes centered right-left positions, large lenticular “eyebrows”, scared mouth expression, rear license plate 47-M4U.

Van San – Green, fixed eyes, scared mouth expression, no rear license plate.

Van with Sticker (lenticular) – Teal, lenticular eyes top left & right positions, small lenticular “eyebrows”, snarky mouth expression, rear license plate 47-M4U.

That’s everything I know about Van.

I’m van-mooshed!