[woodcote]

I had done a bit of research beforehand and there were a few more stands to visit in search of slot cars. The group that own Revell bought Carrera last year and although there were no Carrera products at the show, I had a good chat with the Revell guys and admired their new model kits. Then it was on to the huge Chinese toy company Maisto...

         

You might have seen these Maisto Tech R/C sets around in the run up to Christmas. They are 1/43 scale, cheap, cheerful and sort of what you expect from bargain basement slot car sets...

         

The big set actually comes with the track glued together and attached firmly to a cardboard baseboard (with optional legs) - avoiding all the inevitable set-up issues of a cheap set. The cars are Artin-ish and were suitably good fun round the figure-of-eight with a battery powerbase and thumb controllers. Of course, Maisto own the Polistil brand and the F1 cars have the Polistil logos on them - which was kind of interesting, given the recent discussion on the Slot.it / Policar thread.

But what was most interesting - especially for Leo - was this new set for 2020, including some neat off-road undulations...

         

The Polistil branding is for Italy (and other parts of Europe where the Polistil name is known). It'll be Maisto here, when it arrives. RRP is £49.99, but I've seen the small Maisto set - the Gran Turismo one - for £11.99 in the post-Christmas bargain bin at Robert Dyas. It would be rude not to grab one, I think...

That was it for slot cars, but the Hotwheels distributor had a new Crash Racers set. This system first appeared last year, developed by a couple of ex-Hot Wheels designers. It is a slotless track and the cars are charged up and then set free to run round the track for 20-30 seconds. The first set sold well in the US, but bombed here - it can be picked up quite cheap (here). The new set is smaller and has Nascar licensing, of sorts...

   

Another couple of things I liked very much...

         



Overall, there was an enormous amount of fab, cute, innovative and exciting stuff - and quite a bit that was fairly rubbish. Just as I was leaving, I had a quick demonstration of the Lego 'Hidden Side' augmented reality stuff and it is pretty cool (see here). AFX have already tried augmented reality with slot cars (in the US) - which didn't really work - but I can imagine someone else will give it a try somewhere down the line.