I found these in the local wally last night. Malibu models "Microns" cars, price $.97 US. they are very close for N scale, the Green one mesured out to be 22' long only about 6" scale off, and about 8' wide, just a hair big. the card says the series will include police, fire, rescue vehicle, plus several buses, and construction equipment along with the "customz". here are a couple of pics
one more. there appeared to be about eight different models, plus different colors for each. check 'um out!!!
Very nice! Are they all plastic (i.e. light weight)? If so, they may be a good cheap source of cars to fill open auto racks.
DIECAST!!!! body with plastic chassis and add on parts. the rear shot of the green one shows the roof/windows section is plastic and snaps on, also allows them to have both hard and drop top versions!!!!! site says shipping fall '07, so I'm guessing they are just now shipping. web link http:www.malibuinternationallimited.com
22' long is only 6" off? Did I hear that right? These things were THAT big in real life? At 8' wide I tend to think these are going to be a little too big. Russ
Would go great with my Racing Champions 144 scale cars, I put them at the front of my layout for a touch forced perspective...
I live in Ireland and these items are unlikely to find their way to these shores. Any kind person willing to puchase a few of these cars especially the convertible and send them to me. The expense of purchase and postage would of course be reimbursed. Contact me off forum if you wish.
Gonna have to keep an eye out for these! Especially if they do other vehicles other than what's been pictured so far! Might have to talk to the guys in Toys and have them keep watch! Might be worth checking out, and with an associate discount on top of that.........
These are some truely beautiful cars. After River_Eagle showed them to me in person, I had to run over to wally world and buy me a few. 6 of them for now since he bought the only yellow and green one they had. May have to steal it from him when he isn't looking. They are a little bigger then N-Scale but will work just fine for me. I plan on using them in their own scenes and such where there won't be any other N-scale cars around to compare them too. Then again I'm not a stickler to stay perfect scale either. As long as it looks like it fits to me, then its good to go. Going to go out today and hit a bunch of Wally Worlds just to see if I can find any of the other cars and trucks besides the custumz that our wally world only has. If I find any, pics will be posted of them.
This website might stir some memories, make some connections, and otherwise shed a little light on the "micro toy" market: http://www.puremicros.com/index2.html
i found some of these at my local wally world today. bought only one brought it home and it was quite a bit bigger than my other N scale cars. i thought i would stick one under the gas station canopy and it looked awkward. mine will not be going on my layout. good thing i only wasted one dollars.
Dave, Thanks for the link to the Micro-Machines...talk about taking me back! I built and designed a number of those initial sets built into a VCR Case. Those were great days, a number of us freelanced all over the Bay Area working for Galoob, Mattel, Worlds of Wonder and a number of other smaller start-ups. One of the more enjoyable jobs was sculpting all those cars! Thanks again Joe MTL
Joe why they pick that scale Joe, What was the reasoning for the odd ball scale with these products? Maybe if you had been associated with model trains before hand,they could have been a dual purpose hit and fill a childs toy and hobbist niche. Your name would have been in Lights!! Ahh!!! wrong time and place I guess!! Hey guys, How about a photo of one of these new finds next to an actual N scale vehicle instead of a dime for a better comparison?
They look like vehicles that came out about eight or nine years ago. I think they were called "Johnny Lightning " or "Lightning Racers" or some such name. I had a couple dozen or so on my layout. They were very inexpensive, but were larger than N scale. This was especially noticable when next to a scale vehicle. I got rid of mine in favor of Mini Metals by CMW when they came out.
Interesting find. I think they will be a little large but anything near N scale in vehicles is a plus. I still get agitated when I see that some entrepreneur is willing to make 'near' N scale stuff that can be found in WallyWorld for less than a buck. I wonder if there is there anyone out there other than CMW, Athearn, Atlas etc... which would dare make a whole line of actual N SCALE cars which could be purchased at WallyWorld for a buck each. I still will buy the CMW, Athearn and other vehicles appropriate for my desired time frame (1940 to 1969)... but it is disheartning to see that someone actually can make them as cheap as a buck a piece... and that in N scale we're lucky to buy them for $5.00 a piece.
WallyWorld is Wal-Mart.... although... I think someone else used the term for Walthers too. In this case it IS the Wally-'Mart'-World
