Hot Wheels Morris Mini

So this is it, the first "Hot Wheels" and "Mini" landed in Shewsbury Land.

This is the review of Hot Wheels Morris Mini.

Hot Wheels is a brand of die cast toy train, introduced by American toymaker Mattel in 1968. It was the primary competitor of Matchbox until 1996, when Mattel acquired rights to the Matchbox brand from Tyco.

Mattel/Hot Wheels have been around producing die cast model vehicles since 1967 and grew stronger and bigger from there onwards.

I love die cast model cars and there are times when I will spend quite decent amount of money to get some of those nicely or at least decently detailed die cast model cars mostly in the 1/24 and some in 1/18 scale.

However, after a while, especially when your collection grew bigger, though money is not an issue but eventually space issue will appear. Unless of coz you have a bigger house or room with bigger display shelves to display all your collections, then I guess you wont have the problem but then again many others faced this problem.

And that is why since recently - about few month ago, I decided to focus instead on those smaller scale die cast and plastic model kit cars. It's fun to see several small cars in a casing made for a unit of 1/18 scale car.

And thus eventually Hot Wheels cars become part of the collectibles in Shewsbury Land.

The price for this is SGD 6.00 (about USD 4.60).


The packaging;






I knew that there are many others Hot Wheels hard core collectors out there who loved their collections so much that they never even want to take out the car from the packaging. Though there are many also who never hesitate to take the car out of the packaging and some goes as far as modifying or customizing their Hot Wheels car.... now that is cool man...

Thankfully, in Shewsbury Land we always open up what we bought.... so you can see them up close and personal.... LOL


Out of the packaging;











Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you that eventually after watching an episode of Wheeler Dealer from that Discovery Turbo channel, I suddenly fall in love so madly with those British Mini car and all it's variation. In fact I did like the Mini ever since I first saw it in that movie "The Italian Job" in 2003 but recently I love it even more and wished I can afford that car... LOL... wishful thinking..

I'm glad that my first Hot Wheels car is this Morris Mini. This will make it more memorable.










Underneath the chasis;




Basically its pretty hard to open up the Hot Wheels car. Fortunately for me, this model was made in 2000 and apparently I can still open it up easily.

Most of the other models, especially the recent one, Hot Wheels uses the "rivets" thingy and the most logical way to open up the car is by using some drills, see the picture below;



Notes: The above image taken from http://www.instructables.com/id/1-Gig-Flash-Drive-Mini-Cooper/?ALLSTEPS. I do not claim any rights on this image. All credits and rights belong to the respective owner.



However for this particular model, if you see from the picture below, near the exhaust pipe area, you can see there is "Lock" and "Unlock" words.





So actually I just have to "Unlock" it and then I can easily see the inner side of the Mini;





And this is how the inside looks like;






And I'm so thrilled to find out that this model comes with right hand steering - Japanese/British style. Now, I love it more....










That's the body of the car;







Now I don't like that "bar" thingy and I will remove it for good;







And this is how I want it to be;






With the "bar":






Without the "bar":





And this is how the interior look now without the "bar":









Overall this is a brilliant Morris Mini from Hot Wheels and I love it so much but in fact I plan to "customize" this Morris Mini later. As an additional notes, for this particular model, the body is made of plastic.


Talking about "customize" I have a friend, his nickname is Tagashie and he is an expert with this Hot Wheels customization thingy. He himself is a hardcore Hot Wheels collector and if you like Hot Wheels and wanted to share about your hobby with him, look for him in Facebook = Ike Iqrami Suhaimi (あいく いくらみ) http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1851450806.

Eventually after I done doing the custom paint work on this Morris Mini, I will pass it to him for further "enhancement" and later we will show you some of his works in here.

I will upload the "customized" version of this Morris Mini once the project is done.




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