The International Brushfire Truck has always been one of my favorite “non-car” Matchbox castings.
But then, we caught footage of this conversation between the Mattel head accountant and the Matchbox design team:
Shit.
Well, it was fun while it lasted. It was a good run, International Workstar Brushfire Truck. We will cherish the first eight versions…
Thanks Mattel for putting another nail in the coffin for Matchbox!
I was complaining about this just the other day, with the Chevy Transport Bus having done the same thing. But for us customizers, these plastic bodies are GREAT!! Because they have metal bases. So, take the old metal body, paint it up nice and pair it with the new metal base, and you've got yourself a fantastic high quality model that weighs a ton and feels great in the hand. So it's not all bad.
Mattel Bean counters must die!
Whoever it is that is responsible for giving directions to Matchbox designers should be fired. Because things like this are NOT going to increase their sale at all, in fact its exactly the opposite. So this “cost saving” is going to be useless anyway if no one is going to buy anything. Here I am, all happy about what Matchbox are doing and all the great models they have made and then BANG… everything is shot to pieces.
Not everyone is a customizer or is able to somehow modify these cars.
Not everyone cares if the body is plastic.
A tragic end to a formerly great casting. This one ticks me off almost as much as what they did to the Sahara Survivor. I may never forgive them for that one.
This is BS! Why in the hell do I want to buy a die-cast base? Aren't they called die-cast cars. This is totally ridiculous. Stupid, greedy, useless, unnecessary. Should I go on?
Well will parents outside of the US want to pay the $3 for plastic when there are other metal cars on the pegs? I guess not, In the reject shops over here Flying customs (except the 57 t-bird) are flying off the shelves, while the same early 2013 matchbox hangs since (they put out hot ones at the same time) for almost a year and to make it worse for matchbox these reject shops with are ahead of the regular shops over here on the hot wheels side of things.
my local fenwick has 40 pegs for hot wheels and 2 for matchbox, tells you everything really, kids don't want 90% of the line to be diggers and construction and parents are tired of buying cheap plastic rubbish.
For the price we pay outside of the US and Canada we should still have metal bases and bodies because a mainline in Europe, Australia etc cost as much as a hot one or flying custom.in the US. Majorette can offer you suspension, opening features, painted details, real sponsor tampos and inserts for lights for less than what mattel can offer a cheap plastic toy. So there is no reason for this to go to plastic body and before people say its due to import taxes in certain contires for the high price, a Lego minfig costs $3 in the US and £2 in the UK but HWs and MBs are 97cents and £1.50.
lots of people do………. Plastic matchbox is utter crap, end of story, end of matchbox.
£1.50, really where, i have seen them as much as £1.99 and £2.19, needless to say they never had any of my money
I customize and give me metal anyday! Plastics you have to sand and with 1/64. You risk sanding away details. I seen the casting yesterday in the store nice tempos still looks the same but cheap. What is worse it is all plastic. I remember when I was a kid there was a company that did the Ford Galixie police car even the plastic on that car was thicker than what is on this great truck. MB got my hopes way up just for Matel to pull the rug. I wish they would just sell the line already. This was total BS end of story…..
You guys outside the US are getting screwed! I can't understand why they bring them to the US just to ship them out again. Why not just send them directly to other countries from China or Hong Kong or wherever there making them now. As a matter a fact why not just make them at home and bring our jobs back?
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