Street Troopers Target Exclusive!

Ok, so it’s Wednesday morning and I was running late for work because I had to meet with an electrician at my house, but that’s another story, and I hop on the freeway or should I say noway, as in there’s no way you’re going to get to work in a half an hour like usual. It’s foggy and it’s bumper to bumper traffic, that looks like it’s going nowhere! Excuse the bug remains please and give them a moment of silence…

and as I’m sitting there listening to the radio they’re telling me traffic is at a stand still because there are several lane closures because some people don’t know that you should drive slower in the FOG!!! I look out my window and what would usually be a view of the mountains and rolling hills, and the northbound lanes of the freeway are mysteriously BLOCKED by a thick white wall of FOG. Needless to say there were several multi-car pile ups. GO FIGURE.

I’m glad I was running late or I would have been in the middle of this FOGGY FIASCO.

So off to brighter news, Dimex received an HK package again, WOOHOO!!! We are on a roll this week. I guess that makes up for the lack of posts yesterday. This is a killer one, it’s the STREET TROOPERS PROJECT:66 “TARGET EXCLUSIVE”. That’s right, this particular deco can only be found at TARGET stores later this summer. HAPPY HUNTING!

Oh yeah, occasionally we’ll get asked by HK to supply some visuals for an instruction sheet or packaging and what not. This one is especially funny because it was so last minute, that we just took a quick pic of, well, we’ll just call him “DESIGNER X”, and used him for the illustration reference. Do you know who it is? Send us your comments! Have a great week!

HK GRAB BAG 1:10 HUMMER® HX™ Concept R/C!!!

So here it is, Monday, and the HK Grab Bag/Box thinga-ma-jiggy comes in. We are excited! What will arrive today? DiMex is so excited he is praying…

What is it? Hurry the suspense is killing us…

and it’s….

Fresh Metal samples…Cool, but not what we were expecting.

DiMex is obviously frustrated…Come on HK! Something New!

and it’s…Fresh Metal 1:18 Bikes! Still Cool, but we were hoping for something a little more.

But this…wait this one is big.

in all it’s bubble wrapped glory…

Geez, hurry up already Chris! Tear that sucker open!

Yes, the 1:10 HUMMER® HX™ Concept R/C Handsample!!! This is pre-production baby! You are getting a first glimpse of what will soon be hitting stores everywhere!

Isn’t it beautiful?

Yes…yes it is. Christian’s prayer worked…and now we don’t have to sacrifice him to the toy gods!

Till next time! Hope you enjoyed the sneak peeks!

Maisto Out Of The Closet! part 2

Remeber the Hoodz? Yeah, these were the best, HUGE, GINORMOUS front ends/hoods/grills, whatever you want to call them, and TEENY-TINY, MICRO-SIZED, rear ends. WHAT THE???? What were we thinking? Well, I’ll just go out on a limb and say, this didn’t come from CAPD. They are kinda cute though, and with the GirlZ, and the HoodZ name giving you street cred, you can’t go wrong, right? …WRONG! Here is a little mockup in all it’s HoodZ glory, that launched the “HoodZ Craze” or some of us hoped it would have! They are cute though aren’t they?

maisto on the track – 1:10 ducati ready to race!

fresh on the heels of our ultra successful line of 1:18 moto gp racing motorcycles, maisto is ready to begin shipments of the new 1:10 scale moto gp. first to the track will be the ducati team, headed by #1, last year’s champ, casey stoner

also in the mix is #33 marco melandri.

well, sort of. seems marco might find himself on the outside looking in – the rumors are rampant about a possible replacement in may, maybe by max biaggi. but until then, we’ve got stoner and melandri ready to race.

all in a days work… part 2

as a follow up to our previous post when we visited our factory earlier this week, we have a few more snippets for you.

maybe this is zinc to some, but to others, this is pure gold…

so after the bodies come out of the mold, they are pretty rough – certainly too rough to paint. so we have this machine, it’s my favorite cccccuuuzzzz iiiitttttt vvvvviiiiiibbbbrrrrraaaattttteeeeessssss lllliiikkkkeeee cccccrrrraaaaazzzzzyyyyyyyyy….. basically it’s this huge vat that the bodies are run up into,

and it is filled with smooth rocks and cleaned with water. it smoothes the rough edges of the bodies, getting them ready for the paint shop.

to give you an idea of the size, here is mark coming down from looking in on the polishing

ok, then the bodies come through a chute and are hand polished and readied for painting

one final inspection before going off to the paint shop – here we outsource this job to some visiting experts:

Maisto in PORTUGAL

well, well, well, seems the ole double d has stirred up a little competition amongst the managers, all looking for a little piece of web-space to tout their favorite customer. we saw it a little with the folks in Dubai, and hot on the heels of that gem we have some news from portugal. seems a new store has opened by the name of Casas Das Prendas – here is a shot of the store in the mall –

and here’s an even better one of the front of the store

here’s our boys David and Pedro Lopes, surrounding the owner of the store Pedro Marguez – yeah, the Lopes’ are all smiles now, but if they don’t get the order, watch out…

we are ok, we got the order, it shipped, and the store is looking good…

the final picture, honestly, we’re not sure who this is – some speculate she’s a princess, others think she might have nothing to do with this thread – all dd knows is this – when we receive a pic of a beautiful woman, obviously from money, and it is in anyway related to the post, that pic is going in…
we’ll apologize afterwards…

boa sorte Senhor Marguez!

all in a days work… part 1

as promised, today’s post will give a little more insight into the manufacturing side of things.
while on our eastern swing, we had the good fortune to host our friends from Ford and their licensing agency Beanstalk. we spent the entire day with Mark, Jon, and Patrick, traveling to our factory in dongguan city, getting a great tour from the folks there, traveling back for a meeting in our showroom, and then entertaining them at night. normally this stuff seems like work, but because these folks are so nice, it was really more of a cool day of touring around a foreign country.

whenever we come here, we always marvel at the transportation systems that is normal for the locals – such as this makeshift taxi

we were also rushing to snap a photo of these tractorish looking flatbeds, kind of a mullet on wheels – business in the front and partay in the back

then it was on to the factory. the size of the factory is enormous, and it is laid out on a plot of land covering over 1.6 million square feet. and this is only one of the factories the bosses own

ON TOP OF THE WORLD!

well, not figuratively, i mean there is a lot of stuff going on in the world. but still. i’m just sayin’. and it would appear nothin is getting in the way of our friends from the good old U.A.E. from putting up the BAAADDDESSSTTT (and we mean that in a really really good way), i mean the BBBBBBBBBBAAAAAAAAADDDDDDDDDDDEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSTTTTTTTTT looking displays in Toys R Us Dubai, believed to be the 2nd largest TRU store in the world. tell me – who is controlling the shelf space in this store?

who has the BBBBBBBBBBAAAAAAAAADDDDDDDDDDDEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSTTTTTTTTT looking planet earth with cool Maisto cars attached to it???

and who controls the planetary horizon in the store, obliterating anything else from view???

uh, yeah – that would be us, Maisto, and our twin sistah from a different mother Bburago. props to Mr. Rao and his group, as well as TRU Dubai. we must be ON TOP OF THE WORLD!!!!!!!!!!!

New Lamborghinis Spotted in Showroom

one of the nice features of coming to hk is you never have to look too hard to see some new products. a quick tour of the showroom was more than paid off by the appearance of pre-production samples of the 1:18 Gallardo Superleggera, in silver and yellow

the new Murcielago LP640

and a 1:24 LP640

all of this was overshadowed by one new lamborghini, and it is not one we even sell. there, in all of it’s blingful glory (do the kids still use the word bling?), was a Swarovski crystal encrusted Murcielago.

The number they gave me was over 1,000 crystals, each one hand applied. you know what they say about the cost of these – if you have to ask, you probably can’t afford it anyway. so of course i asked, cause i can’t afford it, and was told this had a retail value of over $1,000. and how many did i want? just looking, thanks…

DD’s ON THE ROAD – HONG KONG BABY!

double d is going all out for our loyal readers this week, handling most of the posts from Maisto (and our twin sistah BBurago) headquarters in Hong Kong.
it was an enormously long day, with a 3 pm pdt flight to taipei, transfer to a hk flight, train from the hk airport to kowloon, taxi to the hotel, arriving at 12:30 am monday morn, hk time (9:30 am pdt) – 18 1/2 hours travel time. but it’s worth it. actually the taxi ride was worth it – i think the driver sensed maybe i was not from these parts, so he tuned into a station that featured helen reddy’s “i am woman” followed by sam the sham and the pharaohs “wooly bully” – now i feel at home!
we’ll be traveling to the factory on tuesday, hopefully we can get clearance from the powers that be to provide some photos showing how we do what we do.
check back tomorrow for the hk report…