After over a month of no major Matchbox sneaks, the Matchbox team finally previewed some upcoming recolors and a couple new models!
The sneak that I find most exciting is this Chevy Blazer EV. Of course, if you’d asked me whether I wanted a Blazer in the Matchbox line, I would have looked at you like you were crazy. However, I’m quite impressed with the job Matchbox did on this model – there looks to be a crazy amount of casting detail here. The amount of depth to the front fascia is quite impressive, and it does a good job of replicating the rather intricate front end on the Blazer. Unfortunately, the Blazer’s characteristic notches behind the front wheel arches look to be just tampo printed rather than part of the casting, but at least they did a good job molding the door handles! I also have to say, these are some of the most impressive wing mirrors I’ve seen from any Matchbox model, and I hope it’s the beginning of a new trend for the brand. From this angle, we can also see that the Blazer is a Moving Parts model with an opening hood, though I’m not really sure why they chose to have an opening hood. From the pictures I’ve seen online, what’s under the hood of the Blazer EV is mostly just plastic trim and a tiny frunk. Does an opening hood really add that much value?
Perhaps the more exciting opening hood is on this Evo, freshly recolored in black and looking good! I love these silver 5 spoke wheels, as they seem to fit the character of the car much better than the gold ten spokes that the Evo debuted with. The color match on the black plastic of the spoiler looks decent, though obviously it lacks the metal flake of the rest of the car. I’m thrilled to see this Evo getting so much use in the Moving Parts line, and I hope we continue to get more clean releases!
Given Matchbox’s British heritage, I’m sure many collectors will be happy to see the addition of the Triumph TR6 to the range, in a proper shade of British Racing Green (naturally). While this isn’t necessarily “my kind of car”, I do appreciate how well Matchbox has captured the dorky proportions of the 1:1 TR6 – the front end is huge while the doors are comically small. Note that this model also has similarly detailed wing mirrors, a promising sign for them being a larger trend at the brand!
Though we never get a close look at it, the champagne colored crossover in the background of several of these shots appears to be a Nissan Ariya. From what we can see, the model looks ok, but the Ariya in general looks like a bit of a blob. It seems like an odd choice of model for Matchbox to make. Sure, it fits their current push into EVs, but I can’t help but wonder if they are saturating the line with a few too many similar EV crossovers. Speaking of which…
After what feels like a full year of seeing the blue VW ID.4 on the shelves at Target, they are finally releasing a recolored version. This shade of red is quite nice, and I’m glad to see that it has retained those silver details on the sides, though the rear of the model is not visible in these sneaks so we don’t know whether it has maintained the rear detailing of the debut blue.
We’ve seen sneaks of this yellow Bugatti Divo before, but it’s still nice to get a few more angles of it. It looks to be using the same deco as the Target Red Edition, and it looks very striking in yellow. My best guess is that this will be a 9 pack exclusive, as a Divo was previewed as a 9 pack model at the Gathering last year.
In the background, we can see a new silver recolor of the G-Wagon, looking wonderfully stock. This might just be my favorite color on the G-Wagon so far, as I feel like silver is the most common color I see out in the real world.
Finally, @cwiersma63 on Instagram just found a new 9 pack, which contains the bright blue recolor of the Mustang Mach-E. I really like the look of it, though I’m not sure about the gold wheels on a bright blue crossover. This casting seems to be having a bit of a moment, as we are also seeing a flat gray recolor of the Mach-E hitting stores overseas now.
The list of upcoming Matchbox models has been updated to reflect these new sneaks, and you can view my previous news roundups here.
diecastleno.com 
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