Green cutie

If this thing doesn't strike you as cute, I don't know what will. Chubby new-born pandas perhaps? Maybe these?

This year Hot Wheels came out with a 'tooned version of the Volkswagen Kombi. Man, is it cute. Not Care Bears nor Rainbow Brite-cute, but manly, surfer-dude-cute.

I'm a sucker for VWs — Beetles, Karmann Ghias, Transporters or Kombis (or microbusses), Golf GTIs, and the venerable Type 181. Why not? Volkswagen has Porsche lineage, for which I'm also drawn to like a bug (puns are fun) to black light.

Anyway, it's super-deformed (pardon the Gundam allusion, I still can't quite get over them), it's got tampos of waves on the sides, and it's metallic green! 3 levels of Kool! Note the surfboards at the back and you've got 4. Wheelie bars just push the casting off the edge and into über-coolness. If the Kool Kombi was real and tested by BBC's Top Gear trio, it would be placed on the Sub Zero side of the Cool Wall.

I, however, really don't care for the lame orange colorway which was the second variant, but I got one anyway. I'm pretty sure I can bastardize it so that it'll come out more decent. The third release for 2013, the white one, rocks so much that it can take away a bride and her groom from their dream Malibu beach wedding to their honeymoon hotel. I can't wait to get my hands on that one.

And so, the blabbering stops.

Click on the thumnails below to see more images on Flickr.

What the f**k have I been up to?

It's been more than a year. Priorities have changed and my taste in collections has changed. A bit.

So, what has kept me busy during the past 18 months? These

It all started with trying to get Matchbox and Hot Wheels versions of the Volkswagen I'm most crazy for -- the VW Type 181. Call it the Kurierwagen, the Trekker, the Safari, or the Thing. Back during my high school days, I was lucky enough to have driven one that was owned by a very good friend. May God bless your soul, Beng.

The want to get them all turned into an urge. The urge turned into an obsession. So I turned to the toy stores.

The Hot Wheels (and some Matchbox) versions were easy to acquire off the pegs.

Getting two variants made by Matchbox was a bit more challenging. Luckily, I found the zebra and red (Lesney) editions being sold by a nice chap from one of the local die-cast forums.

The pearl-white variant from the 2011 Matchbox VW Classics 5-pack was a given due to it's recent release:

So was the HW Boulevard Series release (shown below with a Johnny Lightning one), since it was just released last year:

I got so into it that I grabbed another Johnny Lightning Thing.

That's not all. I'm still in the process of finalizing a sale and getting Jada V-Dub 1/64 versions.

However, until now, I'm still looking for the one significant variant that's missing from my MBX/HW collection -- the green Matchbox VW Thing from the 2008 10-pack. I let one being offered in eBay slip by a few months ago, and I still can't forgive myself for doing so. If you've got one, and are willing to part with it, kindly drop me a message (arnelmanlises @ yahoo . com) and I'd be more than willing to work things out.

Here's a pic of the Thing (excuse the pun) I'm desperately looking for:

Pic borrowed from http://www.freewebs.com/71westfalia/vwmatchboxthingghia.htm

Maybe you're wondering how come it took me 1.5 years to snag the 8 variants from Matchbox and 6 from Hot Wheels. Well, here's the great part -- it wasn't only VW Type 181s that I went after. But that's for another blog post. :D

See you all next year! ^_^