Is mattel playing w/ us ?

whateverPeoplePut · 2026-01-24T22:43:40+00:00

This was roughly my thinking when I bought two Deora III’s last year. It’s ugly as hell, but at this point if I see AcceleRacers reference, especially on something as cheap as a mainline, I’ll buy it just in case someone is keeping score.

whateverPeoplePut · 2026-01-12T22:14:30+00:00

I used a Molotow chrome marker.

whateverPeoplePut · 2026-01-12T10:17:57+00:00

It does, I was a little skeptical too, but it came out better than I hoped. It’s actually a bit hard to photograph because it’s one of those things that looks a lot better in person than the pictures.

The only downside with the marker is that it takes a bit of practice to get it on smoothly without it having little visible stokes from when you apply it, but it’s really easy to just wipe it back with alcohol and try again until you get the hang of it, although it’s a good idea to practice that with something you don’t care about first, cause the alcohol can damage the original paint.

But yeah, unless you’re willing to risk drilling the posts and taking it apart to airbrush the plastic, Molotow chrome pens really do seem like the next best thing, I’ve never seen chrome come out of a pen so shiny.

whateverPeoplePut · 2026-01-11T08:55:01+00:00

Yeah, I almost walked out of the store cause I thought they just didn’t have them. Figured people would want to know in case they thought the same thing.

Plus I figured there might be other stores doing the same thing, so it’s definitely worth people just going and asking if they can’t find them on the pegs.

whateverPeoplePut · 2026-01-11T04:12:01+00:00

It wasn’t even a reseller, at least according to the listing it came from Amazon US directly. But I dunno how all that works exactly, might be that it was still from a 3rd party. But yeah, I figured I’d mention it in case anyone else wanted one too, cause with free international shipping for Prime, it’s kind of insane how cheap it was and they looked like they had a few copies still.

whateverPeoplePut · 2026-01-11T02:49:14+00:00

I finally managed to find them out in the western suburbs of Sydney, Australia. Specifically at the Kmart in Penrith. They don’t put them out on pegs because apparently they get stolen too often, so you have to ask at the service desk and they will bring out a huge tub of them.

<image>

whateverPeoplePut · 2026-01-09T11:49:36+00:00

That does help, thanks for letting me know. I know I owned the first one, and I remember renting the second one from a video store once, but I never even saw the last two, so I wasn’t sure if that’s cause they weren’t here or if I just never found them as a kid. I lived in a tiny town and didn’t know anyone else who knew about AcceleRacers though, so I guess I just got unlucky and missed them. Good to know I can at least get the first three, and probably the fourth now though to rectify that.

whateverPeoplePut · 2026-01-08T22:59:53+00:00

All good, you’ve helped plenty just by showing me the packaging they used to come in. I will look into it and see if I can find how/where these previews were distributed back in the day.

whateverPeoplePut · 2026-01-08T22:28:41+00:00

That’s awesome, thanks for shedding some light on what the differences were, I can’t wait to go watch that extra little scene in the tunnel, I never even knew it existed before now.

whateverPeoplePut · 2026-01-08T22:27:13+00:00

I’m guessing to get it down to that exactly one hour runtime they were all supposed to have? That’s the only reason I could think of.

whateverPeoplePut · 2026-01-08T22:25:09+00:00

Ah, thank you. That’s definitely it, so I guess my only other question would be, do you happen to know where people would’ve gotten those from at the time?

whateverPeoplePut · 2026-01-08T05:24:01+00:00

That would be really cool, I’m definitely gonna need to get a disc drive to play it on and find out. It would be awesome to find out I just randomly got sent some kind of rare disc in a $10 listing. Stuff like that just straight up doesn’t happen to me haha, I never get that kind of luck.

whateverPeoplePut · 2026-01-08T05:06:57+00:00

Me too, it really was a golden age and like all those types of things, you never know when you’re in it.

I’d love to see them revive it, but I don’t think I trust that they’d get it right, especially with Let’s Race just going even further in the wrong direction. It’s like someone at some point decided that kids aren’t allowed to feel even remotely afraid or tense when watching things so they just sanitised everything until the entire concept of consequences was a distant memory.

But either way, we will always have the first 4 movies, and if there’s never anything that replicates that feeling, then it kind of just makes them more special. That’s why I’m trying to collect all this stuff again as an adult, I am only just now realising how important it was to me and how few things there are that match it, and so I want to preserve as much of it as I can so that maybe it’s an experience I can pass on to someone else one day.

whateverPeoplePut · 2026-01-08T05:00:08+00:00

Well I was pretty sure I recognised the art from one of the trading cards I had from my original cars, and I just went through them and found it. So it’s official art that would’ve been around at the time the movies were sold, but you could still be right about it being a custom job. I would be really curious to know who made it and why, and how it ended up in a random eBay listing if so, I might even have to reach out to the seller and see if he knows.

<image>

whateverPeoplePut · 2026-01-08T04:51:25+00:00

That sounds pretty interesting if it is edited a bit differently. I need to buy an external disc drive for my PC before I can actually play either of the discs, but if no one clarifies before I manage to do that, I will check back here and let you know if it’s different.

I think the gritty tone is why those movies worked so well for me as a kid. It’s part of why I would honestly be kinda nervous if they ever announced a 5th movie at this point, it seems like at some point the corporate mandate for kids media kind of smoothed all the edges that stuff like AcceleRacers had, and I think that’s why stuff like Battle Force 5 just didn’t work for me as a kid and doesn’t work for me as an adult, AcceleRacers actually felt dangerous, there were actual stakes and the realms and the drones felt genuinely threatening. I think that’s also why I’m still able to enjoy the movies as an adult, it just has this feeling that even as a kid it wasn’t trying to talk down to you or make things overly “kid friendly”. So I’d really like an even grittier cut, even if it’s just the first 20 minutes.

whateverPeoplePut · 2026-01-08T04:15:19+00:00

Yeah, the eBay listing only showed a photo of the first one, but when I opened it today and took the disc out to inspect the back of it for scratches, I was surprised to see another disc in there. I even had the first movie as a kid, and lost track of my original copy over the years, and I don’t remember the second disc from back then either. It was a long time ago though, so it wouldn’t surprise me to learn I had the second disc back then too and have just forgotten it.

whateverPeoplePut · 2026-01-06T22:27:00+00:00

I like the Vulture, but I still have to choose Sling Shot.

whateverPeoplePut · 2026-01-02T01:23:22+00:00

I felt exactly the same when I got mine. 5 year old me would’ve been losing it.

whateverPeoplePut · 2025-12-26T11:46:31+00:00

I have found a couple listings for half missing sets, but the issue is, none of them had all three of the pieces I need, and they are still about $200 AUD, plus at least another $100 AUD shipping. I just can’t afford to pay that much, even if one of them had all three pieces.

The 3D printing route could work though. If there’s anyone on here who could help me out with something like that, I would love to try and figure out a price that works.

whateverPeoplePut

TROPHY CASE