MORE FROM NUREMBERG: Muscle Machines, TrueScale Miniatures, Ghostbusters II, Schuco Cobra

Feb 02, 2012 No Comments by

Yes, it’s Super Bowl Weekend, and most of the free world will have salsa on their breath and both eyes glued on the game this Sunday. But the first week in February means one thing to hardcore collectors this year:  the International Toy Fair in Germany. Nuremberg is hopping with new releases for 2012, and some of the highlights were… well.. surprising.

Take, for instance, Schuco‘s apparently elaborate revisiting of the 1:12 Cobra mold once made famous by GMP. This go ’round, it seems that the tool is getting a freshening up and a few new liveries. We can’t wait. Another surprise is the re-emergence of Muscle Machines; we got these exclusive snaps at the Maisto booth, and from the look of things, the much-missed line is back in good hands. So is the racing heritage of Lotus, a la TrueScale Miniatures; these resin tooling models of the 1977 and 1978 racers look like a great followup to the high-end models of the Tyrrell we saw a while back – and the still-to-come turbine car that purportedly was sent back for further “cooking” by TSM’s head guy, Glen Chou.

While we weren’t surprised by Hot Wheels Elite‘s announcement of 1:43 and 1:18 version of the upgraded “Ecto-1A” from Ghostbusters II (we figured we’d be seeing this one – and possibly a “dirty” version of “Ecto-1″, as it appeared at the beginning of GBII), our pics of the in-process “K.I.T.T.” from the original Knight Rider show a high-detail Trans Am mold in the making. And yes, TV heads – this one will have a working scanner light up front.

The best news is that samples are currently on their way to us – and we’ve got a hankering to shoot some video and tell you all about it.  These pictures are only the beginning of a full year of cool models from familiar sources – and brands you may never have heard of.

Game on.

 

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Joe Kelly Jr.

About the author

I was always crazy about toy cars and car-themed play sets, but I got hooked on car models when my cousin sent me a pair of built-up AMT kits - a '61 Continental and a '57 Thunderbird. I was six or seven years old when another cousin - Carl - showed me how to build and paint, and by the time I was nine, I had a pretty good collection and a great "spares box" on hand. The original Auto World catalogs were my dream books; my allowance was spent before it was ever earned, and I knew every hobby store and model retailer on Long Island. Then came slot cars, Cox .049-engined Baja Buggies and airplanes, and, ultimately, the real things. I still have some of those old models, and when time allows, I still build or detail scale cars. But it's the ready-to-display replicas and scale racing models that have really had me jazzed for the past fifteen years or so. The "mint" diecasts and the 1:18 American Muscle cars that I cut my serious collecting (and writing) teeth on back then led straight to the current crop of offerings from high-end makers and models in every scale. I also love scale model photography, and shooting, scoring, and producing videos of the models I love. I'm a proud member of the DiecastSpace Diecast Hall of Fame, as well as the Diecast Car Collectors' Club Diecast Scale Model Hall of Fame. I'm also proud to be a part of the Die Cast X Team, and I'm looking forward to contributing to the print publication, and working with the DCX video crew to bring more in-hand model review segments out to the collectors. And, yeah - I still have that spares box.
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