It's a Sickness

I'll let you draw your own conclusions as to really who's obsession it is, however. Wink, wink.


This is Colin's collection of the cars toys from the movie Cars. While we don't have every car that has been released, the collection does include 15 different versions of Lightning McQueen, 8 different versions of Ramone, 3 different versions of the twins Mia & Tia, 2 different Maters, and as many of the different speedway racers, Radiator Springs town-folk, and other assorted cameo characters that we can find. I say that we have as many as we can find because surprisingly, there is quite a devoted collector following for these cars.

When I say devoted I mean D-E-V-O-T-E-D. There are entire message boards and blogs where fans can pass on information about which new characters have been spotted in stores in various areas around the country. Some actually get inside information from sources at Mattel as to how the cases are labeled because certain cases contain certain cars that are the latest releases. New terms have been coined. Older cars that have been out for awhile that are not so rare as the new releases are known as "peg warmers" because they hang on store pegs for long periods of time taking up valuable space that might otherwise be used to display newer, more current releases. We have seen some of the more rare characters sell for as much as $50 on e-bay. Yes...$50 for what essentially is a Hot Wheel.

Colin's collection started for his 2nd birthday which was, of course, Cars themed. Scott and I decided that we'd like to get him a set of the cars characters for one of his presents. At that time, only the main core characters from the movie had been released. Lightning McQueen, Chick Hicks, Mater, Sally, Doc Hudson, Sherrif, Flo, Ramone, Filmore, Sarge, Boost, Snot Rod, DJ, and Wingo. So, we went to the store, and found...nothing. Demand was so great for the cars that time that stores just could not keep them on their shelves. So, we turned to e-bay, did what any parent would do to get their kids what they want for their birthday, and paid entirely too much money to get Colin some cars. We didn't completely loose our minds, though. We never paid anywhere near $50 for any of them, but we did plunk down a good chunk of change for the set.

From then on, the collection continued to grow. However, since then we have not purchased any of them on e-bay. We've found that if we wait long enough, eventually we can find all of the newer cars we're looking for locally which is much more pocket-book friendly, LOL.

On Saturday morning, K-Mart stores nation-wide held a 2nd annual collector's event for the Disney Cars. In this event, special cases of cars were shipped to the stores and were be opened no earlier than 11am when the event started. The first collector's event last year featured 5 characters that had not previously been released. This year's event had 13 never-before-released characters. A few of the cars available were different versions of characters that we already have that we decided against doubling up on. In the end, we came home with 11 of the 13 to add to our collection. Notable scores included Todd the Pizza Planet truck from the Toy Story movies, and 7 more of the speedway racers that weren't previously available.

Given the popularty of these as collectors items and the Cars sequel that is due to be released in 2011 who knows how much larger the collection will grow?