The CARS singles are known as the “mainline.”

It is borrowed from the Hot Wheels line connoting that the single CARS on the blister pack is the mother trunk line of CARS, the diecast.

But for new collectors or those who for some unfathomable reason were not collecting these in 2006 🙂  , it can be a bit confusing to sort through the entire line of name changes, card changes and even name changes to the same or real similar looking CARS …

So, let’s go to the wayback machine so you can see what’s been released and where we stand. The 2006 Desert Art series 1.0 & 1.5 were covered first. The last post covered the 2007 Supercharged series 2.0 & Supercharged series 3.0. Technically, some Supercharged cars & cards were released at the tail end of our calendar year 2006 but anything after October counts as the following year for Mattel.

The quick summary is that to this point there were now 16 CARS on the single blister packs at the end of the Desert Art series and an additional 24 CARS released for the first time on the Supercharged cards (both series) so after two card designs, there were now 40 total CARS (including the Fabulous Hudson Hornet twice – one with silver rims, one with red rims).

2007 started with such promise but had a giant gap in the middle with the Sarge recall but the amazing thing was after having no CARS on the shelf for 4 to 10 weeks (depending on your store), it hardly mattered. People blazed into the WORLD OF CARS series like it was water after marching through a desert.

And now the World of CARS Series – CARS series 4.0

Of course, this is the series that still fresh in everyone’s mind and strangely enough – not only on the shelves but still arriving on some shelves as we speak.

As the first every full year series without any major interruptions, there were 31 NEW releases which includes the 5 Piston Cup racers – unlike the WM8 CARS which have their own classification, the 5 Piston Cup racers released on the Kmart CARS Day feature the World of CARS designation and the back of the card featured “other” WOC CARS so while the card design is different, since they were packed with other WOC CARS for that day, we’ll count them as part of WOC.

This was the first series which feature new releases with a “NEW” snipe as well as ones without. This was purely a marketing decision as they were produced on the same days. This was stopped towards the end of the year (2008).

There were two CARS “fixed” along the way – Fred was re-sized and Darrell Cartrip’s mouth was painted more appropriately.

There were 4 CARS from the WM8 that were re-released on WOC cards – Ghostlight Ramone, Charlie Checker, Cactus McQueen, & Al Oft. So while, they were exclusives and limited previously, these 4 were however the easiest 4 to find on single cards anyway as the WM8.

This was also the first series to feature specific and NAMED Chase CARS – Lightning McQueen & Fred – with Bumper Stickers.

JUST counting singles “mainline,” at this point you would have 77 CARS in your collection including some “fixed” repeats but not packaging variants.

Of course, this series is relatively easy to collect (other than it’s large number of releases) – in fact, you could almost start today and find a solid amount on the shelves though of course, the ‘new’ releases are a little more difficult to find on the shelves.

The WOC Series might just hold its value down the line – though a little large in its scope (76 to 95 CARS & cards depending on what you consider complete) – because other than Sarge, it is complete with quite a few CARS that we will definitely not see again (the two Chase CARS, giant Fred & clown mouth Darrell Cartrip plus maybe Dinoco Heli & Al Oft have been permanently moved to Megasize? … and the 5 Piston Cup racers – while they will be re-released in other formats, as singles again – probably not … so that’s 4-11 CARs we might not see again as singles) … plus with the current schedule of RACE O RAMA, the switchover to lenticular CARS, the switch to “shorter” cards, will some of the stragglers of WOC not make it to ROR? Some of the remaining “re-releases” are not on the schedule yet though of course, that could change at any time … but 4, 6, 11 or more might/will not make a repeat appearance so who knows, like the Rollin’ Bowling Mater game, in a few years, people might be willing to pay much more for Al Oft on a WOC card? 🙂

This post here has a release & pictorial recap of every new release.