| Collecting diecast cars doesn’t start to become a hobby until you’re an adult. Because having them in anyone’s childhood depends on each and everyone’s opinion and personal experience growing up. Sometimes it is not counted until you’re aware of how much a reminder they are in your life.
Personally, growing up there have been so many toys out there that become a part of your youth. It might be the latest trend or what’s popular around that time period. But with all that has been happening in-between life, there would be something constant that by chance or moment it would resonate with you. |
For me, it has to be diecast cars and not just some random car, model, or brand it was Matchbox. It was one of my first toys growing up, and it deeply resonates with me on a personal level because it was always there. This is also the time the internet is slowly becoming this ‘thing’ that would be part of everyone’s lives since it was in the mid-1990s that Volkswagen introduced the VW Concept 1 which would become the New Beetle a few years later as a production model.
But I wasn’t getting into so much with diecast cars until early in 1998 when I got lost at the SM Department store’s toy section. There I would rediscover this interest with Matchbox and then later with Hot Wheels.
The Volkswagen Concept 1 would become the production model of the modern Beetle and went ‘viral’ before the term became a thing online through websites reporting them. Matchbox would eventually produce a new casting based on this car in 1996, and I happen to acquire the second release in green, which I’ll be losing with the rest of my childhood collection in March 2004.
I won’t be able to re-acquire this casting unexpectedly until sometime in 2010 at a local toy fair event, and in another story where a friend from the US would eventually send a tiny box of care packages filled with random diecast cars, which would also include the same casting. The one I acquired sometime in 2010 was still on the card from 1998 in orange that would stay MOC in the storage.
Key Features of the Volkswagen Concept 1 below:
- Year Release: 2000 | USA Exclusive
- Base Color: Black | Plastic
- Window: Black Tint
- Tampo: Yellow Stripe | Front Headlights & Circular Vents
- Interior: Black
This second one was not released in this particular colour/livery exclusive to the USA market, but in black with yellow racing stripes, and based on the Wiki description it has “Matchbox 2000” on the windshield that doesn’t say it had one when you look closely. It just simply in a shiny black paint job with a yellow stripe running down from front to rear with detailed front headlights and tiny round vents leaving unpainted details on the rear tail lights.
It would be part of the Show Cars subtheme released in 2000, and it is designated as MB42 made in China that was produced by Matchbox from 1996 to 2009 with the first two releases and the last three being made in Thailand. This version in the 2000s still have suspensions that were slowly paced out to fit with the budget and make the car more stable unlike this one having the front part of the car slightly elevated.
This year 2000 release is twenty-three years old and has slowly aged having a minor paint chip on the front left fender under the wheel well and minor scratches on the windshield. It is still one of the most coveted castings for Volkswagen Beetle collectors as the genesis of the modern VW Bug. It is a proof of concept that would personally rediscover my interest in collecting diecast cars. But I won’t get into it full-on with Matchbox as I’ve mostly got interested in Hot Wheels for another story to share. But this casting of the Volkswagen Concept 1 would bring me down the rabbit hole into the hobby.
Volkswagen Concept 1 is MB42 in the USA released exclusively in the 2000 model year to this colour/livery that was part of the 2000 mainline basic assortment under the ‘Show Cars’ subtheme produced by Mattel and was a present from a friend based in San Francisco in the US.
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