[woodcote]

   

Hopefully you’ll have had time to look at the Scalextric website by now. My first impressions were excitement at the breadth of the offerings and some must-have iconic cars from my youth. Especially pleasing are the return of rally and modern Grand Prix cars, which have been a little neglected in recent years. That Land Rover is pretty special too!

First, a quick introduction to the state of play at Scalextric in January 2023 - and then on to the new models. The good news is that the disruption of the past two years is more or less over. Some of the cars still delayed from 2022 - the green Cobra, weathered DBR9 and the Andretti Formula-E - are all waiting on the decoration and colour matches to be spot-on. The others, including the new-for-2022 Minis, won’t be long.

The 1:64 scale Micro Scalextric range has developed a good mix of sets, cars and accessories. It will now enter a period of stability, which is important for national toy retailers to build brand-awareness and market the range to as wide an audience as possible. The Formula-E set is due next month (February) and there’ll be one new individual car for 2023 - the Aston DB5 with ‘Goldfinger’ packaging.

The situation for the 1:32 scale sets is also one of building on a successful base - the ARC Air World GT and ARC Pro Platinum GT sets will arrive during 2023. There’s also a standard version of Batman vs Joker (currently available only with the Spark Plug dongles) and a brand new James Bond set, featuring two Aston Martins - the DB5 and V8 Vantage. The Bond set will be exclusive to the Scalextric website.

Finally, 1:32 scale accessory packs have been re-packaged to say what’s in them, rather than using the less-than-obvious Pack 1, 2, 3 etc. There will be no additions to the resin-cast 1960s buildings range this year, the first two models having just arrived before Christmas and needing to prove themselves in the marketplace.

That means the overwhelming proportion of investment and development this year has gone into a cracking range of new cars. There’s plenty to get excited about in the catalogue, plus there’s a gaggle of tasty Scalextric Club exclusives, the usual Australia-only releases and more mid-year releases. All of these ‘extras’ will be announced in due course, with news of the first Club exclusives expected soon. The 2024 Scalextric Club car will be unveiled at the UK Slot Car Festival in May.