Cars: Dan Sclarkenberg & Kim Carllins

"McQueen's driver arrived in California but McQueen was missing!" -Dan Sclarkenberg

Today I'm excited to be jumping right back into the world of Cars with another fun diecast review! I'm still in the process of posting on last year's cars and then I'll take a look at some of my more recent 2017 acquisitions. 

This 2-pack featuring Dan Slarkenberg and Kim Carllins was released last April (wow almost a year ago already), but oddly enough it didn't actually start hitting stores in my area until this past November/December. These are of course 1:55 scale diecasts from Mattel, with Dan being #13/14 and Kim being #14/14 of the 2016 "Piston Cup" sub-series. This is the first ever release for both of these characters! 

As shown in the screen shot above, Dan and Kim are reporters for "MPH 55 NEWS." They appear in the film during, what I call, the "McQueen's gone missing" montage (right after Mack asks "did I forget to wipe my mudflaps?").

 

Let's take a closer look at both of these out of the package!

Dan Slarkenberg

Kim Carllins

Both of these cars look great. I especially love their color schemes (particularly Dan's shade of green) and the fact that both these characters are brand new! Really solid stuff; no complaints here.

Now it's time for some FUN FACTS! There's a few this time around...

•  Dan Slarkenberg is named after Pixarian Dan Scanlon (director of Monsters University and the Cars short Mater and the Ghostlight) who also VOICED the character in the film!

• Kim Carllins is named after Kim Collins, a visual effects artist and production manager at Pixar (her credits include Brave, Up, Finding Nemo and Ratatouille—among some others).

• The Dan Slarkenberg diecast was actually originally scheduled to be released in the Mattel 2010 "Final Lap" collection, but was cancelled! Glad to see he made a comeback all these years later. 

Well that about wraps things up today with this look at Dan Slarkenberg and Kim Carllins...two new awesome additions to my collection. If you're looking to grab these, I've still been seeing them often at Target—so definitely check the local stores in your area. If you'd rather just pick this set up online, you can check out current eBay listings HERE or Amazon using the direct link below (really nice sale price currently).

Thanks for driving by everyone. Until next time!