A Needle in a Haystack

Sometimes, that's what it feels like I'm searching for. No End-caps found over the last 6 days. I keep checking and I almost know that I'll be disappointed when I walk in the front doors, but I go in anyway. I talked with one Toy Department manager and he told me that they didn't get any of the surrounding die-casts for the end-cap, just the Banshee's. Hmm, really. Oh well, sucks to be you. Thanks for letting me know so I don't waste my time stopping by again. But there are still 5 W.M.'s that have not put out any End-cap stuff. I'm tired of checking everyday. I think I'll start checking every other day or maybe every 3rd day. It's just gotten to be a little too much driving and not getting enough sleep. Hopefully it will pay off someday. Hopefully. Happy Hunting.

Still NO EndCaps

Up at 6am again today, Sunday. I should be in bed sleeping, dreaming of all the new cars stuff that's on the horizon. But NO. I'm in my car by 6:45 and driving to the first Wal-Mart to check for the elusive October 11 End Cap. Nope. Off to the next, Nope. Next. Nope. Next. Nope. Next. Nope. Wait, what's this cube on the floor. It says, 2009 Hot Wheels. 2009? The 2008's are still coming out. Ya gotta be kidding me. Why, why do they do this crap? I'm starting to really HATE Mattel. So there were some new 2009 Hot Wheels, like I care, a lot of 2008 Hot Wheels, like I care. Some 2008 Hot Wheels Holiday Hot Rods which I guess are some special deal. Yeah, at $4.97 a pop they're special all right. There's 8 of them plus a special extra one so 9 at $5 is $45 bucks. For 9 little stupid cars made in Malaysia. Why isn't my Mattel stock going up and up? They make crappy little cars for pennies and sell them for $5.00 each. I should be rich. Ahh, but the only ones getting rich are those suits at Mattel who suck every penny a consumer is willing to spend out of their pocket. And the saddest part is the nicest, best made die-casts of all are the Cars, and yet they don't have any. Wal-Mart after Wal-Mart after Wal-Mart and no end-caps, no new singles, nothing. Well, I hope they suck it up this holiday season because besides those of us on a mission, I doubt sales will be anything better than dismal. Smarten up Wal-Mart, you're missing a great opportunity.

Another early morning

5am Thursday. Wow. And I'm not even heading out to play golf. This whole W.M. end cap thing is irritating. Actually, I planned on hitting mostly Targets today because it's Thursday and sometimes I find newer stuff there on Thursdays. NOPE. 3 W.M.'s and 4 Targets and nothing. NOTHING. Every fricken section looks like crap. Target is the worst. A few things here and there. It's like they could care less what the Cars section looks like. Amazing. Well, the W.M. end cap is scheduled to be up on Saturday the 11th, so I really only have 2 more mornings to check. It's just getting overly frustrating. It takes soooo much time and gas and to go away empty handed, very sad. I could be sleeping. I think that's what most people do at 5am, but maybe not. Maybe I should be looking for WII's. There very hard to find still. Maybe that's the ticket for this holiday. I was at Target on Sunday morning waiting for it to open and once it did, a couple started hoofing it into the store. Hmmm, I thought, I wonder where they're going. Ebayers? So I followed them. Wait, someone is following me. I started to move faster. They moved faster. Down the isle, turn right, move faster. Why are you following me? Leave me alone. STOP. Excuse me, why are we stopping at the electronics desk? The Hotwheels, Matchbox and Cars are down a ways. So there we all were. The couple in front of me, me and this middle aged mom behind me. What are we in line for? A WII. Are you kidding me? Well, since I'm not looking for a WII I stepped out of line and lucky for the guy who got there late, meaning right after we all showed up, he got himself a WII. They only had 3. 3. Wow. So now I think the smart move would have been to buy the WII and sell it on Evil Bay. But that's not what I do. So, I went back to the Cars section and found NOTHING. As usual. I hope all the hype I keep hearing about the new stuff coming out is true. I'm thinking of just making my trips twice a week from now on. One day hit the Targets and one day hit the W.M.'s. I wonder how that will work out... Happy hunting.

A Beautiful Wednesday Morning

I love the morning. I really do. Except for it being in the morning, I love the morning. Now that our mornings are cooling off here in the Phoenix area, it's great to roll down the windows, turn up the music and drive. I've been an avid Cars Collector for awhile now. Seems like about 2 years I guess. It's hard to remember when I bought my first Car. My son was probably almost a year old. I remember going into a KB Toys and finding the blister packs hanging on the pegs. I checked them out and or course, bought a Lightening McQueen. I was checking out the back of the card and decided that for Carter to really have fun playing with the cars, he would need all of them. And so the obsession started. Here we are 2 years later and I'm still obsessed with those little die-casts. I love them. They remind me of when I was a little kid collecting Matchbox. Back in the day. They came in little boxes, made in England. The quality was unbelievable by todays standards. I can remember going to the toy store with my parents and getting to pick out 1 Matchbox to take home. I remember my green carrying case that had what seemed like hundreds of cars in it (more likely 30) and I remember PLAYING with them all the time. My brother and I would use our wooden blocks and build city schemes. We had ramps, garages and all sorts of cool places. Even though they were all made from wooden blocks, we could imagine whatever we wanted. We had such a blast. Then came Hot Wheels. I think by the time I left for college, my parents house had a huge box, probably 3 X 3 full of orange Hot Wheels track, cars and all sorts of related stuff. Including Sizzlers. Does anyone remember those? O.M.G. I remember when they came out, little cars that actually ran by themselves. Plug them into this little filling station for a minute, turn it on and let it go. We would race those Sizzlers for hours. There were the upgrades, white tires that had more stick. Faster engines. Man was that cool. On one of my recent trips through Target I noticed Sizzlers. I could not believe it. Will my son have the same interest in toy cars that I had when I was growing up? Hard to say really. He's almost 3 and loves EVERYTHING Cars. So at this point, I would say yes. But a lot can happen so I'll just wait an see. He'll have a complete, mint set of Cars waiting for him if he wants it when he gets older. But for now, he's content with playing with the 40 or so Cars that we've opened. Nothing can describe the joy of watching him laying on the floor driving his cars around and making Vroom Vroom sounds. Happy hunting.

Another Saturday drive

This whole Wal-Mart end-cap thing is really irritating. I guess there is a date on the shipping box which informs Wal-Mart to put the end-cap display out on the floor on October 11. But, on September 30th, I stumbled upon a Wal-Mart that had already put out the new stuff. Large blister packs of Al Oft, Barney Stormin and Lightning McQueen. Plus they had the regular releases of Axle Accelerator, Sally Cone, Spin out McQueen and Lizzie. Surprise, surprise, the large blisters were $5.97. Whoa, nobody told me the price was going to be higher. How come the price wasn't higher for Barney Stormin when Wal-Mart had him as an exclusive? Whatever. So I picked up as many as I could and ran for the checkout. Since that day, I've gone out every morning looking to see if any of the other surrounding Wal-Marts have put up the October 11th end-cap. Other than a couple of W.M.'s that had already put out the end-cap and all the merchandise was gone and one W.M. that had just stocked the merchandise in the regular cars area (Duh), I haven't had any luck. So it's a waiting game. I'll keep checking and hopefully, I'll come across another display and pick up the new cars that I need. Happy Hunting.