Leigh’s Diecast Diary

Today has been busy and no mistake.

First off, we received Mattel’s first four 2007 F1 cars in 1:18 scale. These were the McLaren MP4/22s of Lewis Hamilton (Product Code - DC2702M) and Fernando Alonso (Product Code - DC2701M), and the Williams FW29s of Nico Rosberg (Product Code - DC2716) and Alex Wurz (Product Code - DC2717). Where was Kimi Raikkonen’s Ferrari F2007? Mattel have some explaining to do!

During the day, as I was looking through one of the diecast forums, I came across plans for a Mattel 1:18 Hamilton Canadian Grand Prix First Win special (Product Code - DC2702MC). It will feature a separate standing driver figure of Hamilton celebrating his win, and will be a limited edition too. This hasn’t been officially announced by Mattel yet, so there was no information on pricing, but worryingly there was a suggestion that it could be some way north of £100.

In fact, given some recent Mattel specials, we suspect Mattel may try to market this at closer to £200. I hope this isn’t true, as frankly it would verge on taking advantage of F1 fans. A separate standing driver figure might look exciting, but if Minichamps can do it an extra cost of just £3 over a regular 1:18 replica, as is the difference between the Button 2006 Honda (Product Code - DC2612) and the Button Hungary First Win special (Product Code - DC2612H), then how can Mattel feel that it justifies such a premium? They may say that the high price is due to it being a limited edition, but their idea of the number that constitutes a limited edition is somewhat greater than the rest of the diecast industry! Watch this space for the official announcement. We’ll bring you more details as soon as we have them.

In the afternoon I was ‘filming’, as Leigh’s Diary is being taken to ‘the next level’! From next week it will have its own website, where every Monday there will be a webcast, presented by me, where I go through the previous week’s new releases. We filmed the first one today, so you will be able to view it on the new website from Monday. Hopefully I’ll be able to relax as the webcasts become more routine; today I was very nervous!