Cars Toys Blog

Update: Darth Mater sold at auction for $10,000.

This year, Mattel’s Dream Halloween event is being held on Saturday October 25th, from 5 to 8:30 PM in Santa Monica, CA. This is an annual event where one of a kind items are auctioned off to support the Children Affected by AIDS Foundation. Same as last year, Mattel has a very special Cars related item up for auction. From MattyCollector.com:

Collectors,

Dream Halloween is right around the corner. This is a fantastic event where Mattel teams created one-of-a-kind collector items to auction off for Children Affected by Aids. This year, among the spectacular toys are two items we showed off first at San Diego Comic Con, the one-of-a-kind Darth Mater and the second and last publically available “Spirit of Grayskull” figures. Both are fantastic collector items with all proceeds from the auction going to a very noble cause.

If you are interested in attending the event or would like more information about bidding from home please go to www.CAAF4kids.org.

Darth Mater:

It’s Halloween in Radiator Springs and Mater from Disney/Pixar’s CARS has decided to make his own Darth Vader costume! Using found objects from the local junkyard, he has transformed himself into the not-so-terrifying villain Darth Mater!

Created exclusively for CAAF’s 2008 Dream Halloween auction, Darth Mater is a one-of-a-kind 1:9.5 scale model created by the design team at Mattel in close cooperation with John Lasseter and George Lucas. Armed with a light-up red lightsaber that pivots from his right front wheel both clockwise and counterclockwise, Darth Mater makes lightsaber and Darth Vader breathing sounds, plays the classic Star Wars “Imperial March” theme, and utters dialogue recorded by Larry the Cable Guy especially for the occasion with funny quotes such as “Luke, I’m your manufacturer!”

Darth Mater comes on a custom-built 21.75″ wide by 18.75″ deep by 4.75″ high base decorated like the floor of the Death Star with flashing LED lights synchronized with the sounds. The base includes two clear acrylic plaques, one with the Lucasfilm logo signed by Mr. Lucas and the other with the Disney/Pixar logo signed by Mr. Lasseter. Finally, the model is protected by a 21.75″ wide by 18.75″ deep by 14.25″ high clear acrylic case.

Cars Collector member Blake has just let us know about a very cool new Cars book. The book is called “Meet the Cars,” and it is a Target exclusive. It features photos and background on 100 Cars from the movie. It also includes a poster and a bonus mini-book. Check it out on Blake’s blog at Cars Collectors!

You may have seen my post recently on a new site I am launching called Cars Collectors. While there are many ways to connect with other Cars Collectors on the site, one of the nicer features is called communities. Any member on the site can start a community. You can have communities that anyone can join or moderated communities where the owner has to approve membership requests.

Communities are like profiles that everyone can post to. There is a blog for each community that everyone can post to as well as a place to upload pictures and other files. Right now there are 3 communities that I have started, Upcoming Cars, Recent Finds and Cars Trading Post. On Upcoming Cars, you can find news about which Cars are coming next. On Recent Finds, members can post info about what Cars have shown up in their area. On the Cars Trading Post, members can post which Cars they have and which ones they need to set up potential trades with other members.

Sound like fun? Do you have a better idea for a community that you would like to see? Well, what are you waiting for? Head on over to Cars Collectors and sign up!

Mark Gilmore of errorcars.com has contacted me about asking you to register your Speedway of the South sets in the registry he has started at his website. He says to e-mail him your name if you would like it posted, country, state or providence and zip code at speedwayofthesouthregister@gmail.com and the number from the numbered sticker if you have it and he will verify your information and add it to the registry.

Thanks Mark and good luck with this. I hope you are able to get what you need.

Attention all Cars Collectors, head on over to… Cars Collectors! Cars Collectors is the latest addition to the Cars Toys Blog network. It is a community site for fans of Cars where you can create a profile, start a blog, post photos, connect with other members, send private messages, add rss feeds and join a community! I will also be posting exclusive content there that will not be available on this site.

We are just getting started, so there are not a lot of members right now. Hopefully, everyone will join in, and the site will grow. You can view my profile here, http://carscollectors.com/carstoysblog/. I am really looking forward to it becoming a site where Cars Collectors can network with other collectors all over the US and perhaps different parts of the globe!

So what are you waiting for? Get on over there and create your profile! Be sure to fill it out as completely as possible as this will help other members find you and know more about you. Please let me know if you have any questions, and most of all have fun!