May movie swag review: 'Speed Racer'
May 11, 2008, 12:15 PM | by Adam B. Vary
Categories: Film, I'm Just a Geek, Merchandising
Finding a box of promotional swag in one's mailbox is a common event here at EW, kinda like writing about American Idol, or playing with dolls. Last month, however, I received three boxes stuffed with tie-in toys for three prospective May blockbusters, each more elaborately packaged than the last: Iron Man, then Speed Racer, then Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. With 20 separate items of swag inside my office, I realized I had to do something other than pick out my favorites and give the rest to the office-mates who, um, have kids.
So last week I began reviewing each box as its respective movie is released, rating them in categories of packaging, bounty, the coolest toy, the lamest toy, and the general feeling of swag overkill. Last week, of course, was Iron Man. So let's all hit the gas over the jump for a rundown of this week's toy box: Speed Racer.
SPEED RACER
Packaging: A sleek, white case — with a helpful carrying handle — decorated with the iconic Speed Racer
"M" calls to mind the old Hot Wheels cases of yore, and, whaddaya know,
there be Hot Wheels inside! But I'm zooming ahead of myself here. Upon
opening said case, you're greeted with a diorama of sorts of an Emile
Hirsch cut-out next to a Mach 6 cut-out, and, magically, a voice plays
as if over a raceway loudspeaker: "All drivers to your cars, please!
All drivers to your cars!" Then engines rev, tires squeal, and with a Vrrrrrrrroooooommm! Screeeeeee! Zzvvvrrooooo! we're off to the swaggy races.
Bounty: The box is smaller, so the pickings are a bit slimmer. Beyond the items listed below, we've got two classic Hot Wheels cars: The "Racer X Race Car with Spear Hooks," featuring snap on, er, spear hooks that are almost as big as the car itself; and the "Mach 6 with Saw Blades," featuring snap on, er, saw blades that…you get the idea. Their packaging touts their size at "1:64 scale," which tickles me since A) Figuring out the exact measurements of CGI vehicles strikes me as the height of silliness and the height of awesomeness and B) If those saw blades and spear hooks are really to exact scale, then these cars would have an especially difficult time parallel parking. There's also the "Pullbax Mach 5" with the "Pullbax motor for extra speed," which just made me wonder what driving would be like if all cars only had Pullbax motors in them. (Highway on-ramps would be a lot longer, that's for sure.) Finally, we gots two of those Lego dudes — one that looks like Speed Racer and the other like Racer X — but no Lego kits to go with them.
Coolest toy: I'll see your 1:64 scale and raise you
2.6666666667 times to 1:24 scale! (What? Too geeky? Does it help that I
had two colleagues help me figure that out? No? Makes it worse? I
should just get on with it?) Seriously, though, the "Hot Wheels Speed
Racer Mach 5" is exactly the kind of car I would obsessively play with
for hours upon hours all over my grandparents' back porch when I was a
kid, vrooming it up, over and through couches, chairs, the
floor and probably my grandpa's tummy. There's no need for a "Pullbax"
motor, or button-activated headlights, or a motion-sensitive speaker
filled with car engine noises, to do the pretendering for me. The doors
open, the wheels roll, and that's it as far as fancy "interactive"
features go; it's the little details — like the metal body, the finely
painted dashboard, the textured bucket seats — that make the difference
in captivating the imagination. This is what toys used to be all about.
Lamest toy: Um. It's a shirt. A girl's shirt. The cotton's soft and all, and the design's cool enough — until you catch the Speed Racer logo on the back. But. It's. A. Shirt.
Overall swag factor: The presentation's nice without being over-the-top, and if you're into cars, and especially Hot Wheels, then you're kinda golden. But then there's the whole Lego-figures-but-no-actual-Legos thing. And that shirt and its whole "you can't play with me, you only can wear me" vibe. So on a scale of 10 swags, where 1 is a plastic Speed Racer key-chain and a 10 is an actual, drivable Mach 6 (complete with saw blades and spear hooks), I'd give this box a 5.
Comments