Fresh Paint color changing 3″ die-cast — new for 2010

Dip a Maisto Fresh Paint die-cast vehicle in ice water and watch the color change dramatically! Dip it in warm water, or let it warm up naturally, and the original color returns. Do your own customizing by dipping just part of the car for a two-tone look. Twelve all-new body styles.

New Castro-designed car for 3″ Fresh Metal

Tooling model for Maisto Fresh Metal 3" die-cast

Here’s the tooling model for a new Maisto 3″ Fresh Metal car designed by Eddie Castro. We can’t say what the name is now but maybe we can spill the beans next week.

Feb. 10 update: In addition to being in the Fresh Metal 3″ line, this Mark VI car will be used in several new Marvel comics lines from Maisto.

Heavy Metal!!!

Sometimes we sit and debate on things here in the CAPD. What vehicles to do each year, should the vehicle be lowered or lifted?, graphics or no graphics??? What are we gonna post on the blog today and keep everyone entertained and/or fed on their daily die-cast meal (apparently some people eat them). Explain that one to your dentist… If you remember a while back (you do read this daily right? We thought so!) we posted about B-rad’s son-in-law and our military-themed Elite Transports. (Read More Here)

Well, one of these debates was about reality vs. fantasy. Toy cars are fantasy right? I mean of course we want them to look real, but does one prefer realistic attributes over fantasy and making something look cool and fun? Could a heavy duty truck carry a tank for instance? Maybe, maybe not, but it sure looks bada**! What are your thoughts? E-mail us or comment on the post, we’d love to hear your opinions.

How rare is rare?

Often, die-cast collectors find that owning a limited run item is very desirable. Sometimes that rare die-cast can bring big buck$ as was seen with the sale of a very famous not-a-Maisto VW bus with a surfboard a few years ago. So, this brings us to probably the most-rare Maisto car: a 3″ 1999 Ford Thunderbird concept that never went into production. Through some turn of events, no tooling model was ever submitted to Ford for review and no license was obtained to make a 3″ (we did make fully licensed and approved 1:18 concept and later the 2002 production Thunderbird in 1:18, 1:24 and 1:43). When we submitted the pre-production sample shown here, Ford said “no” because they wanted their flagship car to only be made as a relatively detailed model and not an inexpensive 3″. Now that the full-size car has been out of production for a couple of years, maybe we should try again to get this one approved and into production. What do you think?