Those who are familiar with Airland’s Ironbox Newswire on the Hot Wheels side of the house will feel right at home with the news updates provided by Jim Gallegos over on the Matchbox Community Collectors Hall (WWW.MBOXCOMMUNITY.COM) through his Ambassador Report. Here is a subset of the tremendous number of highlights that Jim brought Matchbox collectors for the month of May:

  • The 2008 line is being worked on and I can say that one model being rumored is the Honda Civic Type R
  • Mattel is looking to expand the line to 100 models with 25 recolors for the 2008 line. This is in response to an increased product demand and an opportunity to increase the product space. The line will consist of 10 series with 10 models in each series. This will allow a collector to collect the whole line of 125 models/colors or decide for themselves to pursue certain series selections. This higher number will also allow a more frequent complete product refresh of about every three months.
  • BMW and Mattel have been unable to reach an agreement on tampo printing so they have agreed to disagree and will not be part of the line for now.
  • The next batch of NSF Best of the US series should be out soon at Wal Mart. The runs on these models are very low and have been difficult to get for many. The series will be completed so not to worry. In this series, an El Camino and a Porsche 959 were planned. The El Camino will appear in the last batch but the Porsche 959 has been taken out of the line due to tooling issues. A replacement will be announced later.
  • Did anyone notice that the #4 5-Pack (Fire) was released before the #3 (Airport) 5-pack? This happened because assortment numbers are selected well in advance. There was a tooling change, which can cause things like this to occur.
  • Hitch and Haul releases are scheduled for June and will include a Farm Set with the new MB704 Tractor pulling a brand new MB717 Farm Trailer, and a Vacation set with the MB672 Chevy Silverado pulling a brand new MB718 Travel Trailer.
  • The Dinky line is being reviewed for a possible 2008 re-launch.
  • Look for the US Matchbox web site to be updated in the next few weeks.

And lastly, his May report closes with this exciting news on the Albuquerque Convention:

    The 5th Annual MCCH Gathering Convention in Albuquerque will be the event to kick off The Matchbox 55th Anniversary. There will be 3 exciting models including the introduction of two new castings in beautiful convention exclusive schemes. More on the two new castings at a later date. I can announce the first of three 2007 Gathering Convention models to be released. It is the Route Master Bus, which is being titled the Dealer model and will be limited to about 200 models +/-. This beautiful recreation was designed by Michael Heralda and represents the early “Rainbow” bus we all know from the early Lesney days. These will be available for purchase at the Albuquerque Gathering in July. It will come in a reworked special box.

MB Convention Bus

[via mboxcommunity.com] *-Registration Required

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