Why is it so hard to get the model out of the box?

Well, the bulk of the 1:18 scale toys are made in China and have to travel half way across the globe before they reach the end-user.

Ommitting all the fasteners and tape might be easier for the end-user but only a small percentage would make it that far without damage,

The things travel on trucks, in sea containers, are being loaded and unloaded from one vehicule onto the other before they reach their destination.

Jack

 

I got the Autoart Countach and couldn't understand why they're still using the stickers for the doors, especially with their new packaging. There have been many complaints of this on the diecast boards but AA keeps doing it. Some of the lesser brands don't use the stickers and their cars have no problems with the plastic bands(Maisto, Welly, Ertl, etc)

 

Great post. Although the answers are obvious, it is trully annoying and spoken from my heart.

The Stratos I just got, had a bottom plate screwed to the package plate. I mean c'mon! Enough is enough. And yes those tiny screws are so overtorqued I almost break my fingers trying to unscrew them.

On a somewhat related note: I know many collectors keep the boxes or even the cars in the boxes. Personally I think that is a waste of the car, which I prefer to look at outside the box, but anyway. Is there really a gain in keeping these boxes? I mean, we're talking here Mattel or Bburago cars that are already mass produced articles and if somebody really wants a car for his/her collection, do they really care whether it still has the original packing? I know I wouldn't, I just want the car.

Jack, any comments?

 

Perhaps they are hard to remove because, they are not meant to come out of the box?

 

Hi Andreas,

first of all, my apologies for not letting you know that all the reels etc made it safely home and a great tape and CD-Rom! Thanks a million for that but Christmas was so ridiculously busy, I made 15 hour days just to keep up with everything.

On the boxes:

With hindsight, we should of course all have kept the boxes of our Dinky Toys etc. but at that time, nobody thought that these would ever become collectable and hardly anybody stashed away run-off-the-mill models as an investment. The mint-in-box models that make big money nowadays are at least 40 years old so bear that in mind... Stash away a red Hotwheels 550 Maranello for 40 years? Mmmmm.... Not me....

Nowadays, we KNOW that the old ones are collectable but where Dinky and the others turned out a couple of 100,000 per model (agreed, some manufacturers made it into the millions, even in the early 1960's), a Mattel, "limited edition" is still at least 50,000 pcs... The "normal" models are being produced by the millions and millions and they HAVE to produce these numbers to keep the price down and to earn back the HUGE license fee they paid Fila for the production rights,

If you buy the cars for your own pleasure and not as an investment, I couldn't care less about the boxes but IF you ever decide to sell, a boxed model will ALWAYS make more than a loose one. That even goes for the early 1990's Bburago F40's and the likes.

I don't see ANY of the normal 1/18 Hotwheels make several 100's of $$$ in a decade time, with or without the box (not accounting for possible inflation of course).

Limited editions are a different story.

Reportedly, there are some 40,000 serious Ferrari model collectors in the world so anything produced in quantities lower than that has a collector's value. Would I keep those boxes? YES!

One of the reasons why we don't sell the normal versions of Hotwheels etc. is that they are so plentiful and cheap that we simply can't compete (or can't make any money on them). So, while padding myself on the shoulder, if we don't sell it, it isn't worth keeping the box... GRINNNNNNNN Just kidding!

Jack