Boy I got this one wrong.
When Mattel sent me the latest Fast & Furious release a few months ago, I was positive which models would be the most popular, and which would hang on the pegs.
I would have bet my house that the white Supra that paid tribute to Paul Walker would be the most popular, followed by the black Honda S2000. I also figured the R34 Skyline would be a pegwarmer considering this is the third time the R34 has been released with this deco.
Swing and a miss. The Supra has been a must-have for most collectors, as has the S2K. But it is the Skyline that has been gobbled up. And up. And up. The most common phrase I seem to be hearing is “Found a bin, Skylines gone.” Crazy.
It isn’t a surprise that the model has been popular. The R34 is surely a collector fave these days, much more than its initial release. But this popular? There must be a lot of new collectors – which is a good thing – that have started in the last couple of years, because I don’t get why this model has been so wildly popular.
Especially since there are two far better versions.
This is the third time the R34 in silver with blue deco has been released. It first appeared in the very first Fast & Furious assortment a few years ago. It appeared a couple of years later as well. And now it appears again in this batch.
It isn’t exactly the same though. The silver is more metalflake and brighter than the first two. It also has smaller tail light tampos. But most glaringly, it is missing the front hood and grill stripe. It doesn’t look odd on its own, but compared to its previous two incarnations, it looks sadly incomplete.
But. It is the R34. And yes, there are probably a ton of collectors that missed out on the first two releases. But I didn’t think there were enough to create this kind of buzz. Maybe it speaks to buzz itself. I of course have been accused of hyping things myself, so maybe I am an expert. Hype can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. One person hears another is gobbling up all the Skylines, that means that person must do the same. That hoard goes up on Instagram, and more follow, and whammo. Buzz. Hype. Whatever.
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But it is all good. I think there are plenty to go around, especially as collectors realize their dollars might be better spent on buying one now, and spending the extra it takes to get a previous version with the stripes.
But to each their own.
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