I don't know who at Mattel thought these lenticular Cars were a good idea, but they need to lay off the crack. Not many stores in my area have many toys. The one thing they do have are pegs full of lenticular Cars...but they aren't moving. No one seems to be buying them. I love collecting these with my kids, but they don't want these. They want new ones. Mattel, please dump the lenticulars at Big Lots, chalk it up to a lesson learned and let's get some new Cars out there!

Lenticulars seem to be the equivalent of "let's freshen up this old line."

Apparently, 2-3 years is just too long to keep something going. With short attention spans, comes the assumption that a line is going to die unless it's 'punched up.'

Just look at other lines in which they add some weird little pack-in or change the packaging.


I sometimes look at the Star Wars line which has been revitalized and is still going after almost 15 years. Due to a heavy number of fans there, they grow closer and closer to producing almost every single obscure figure out there.

Sadly, Cars will never reach this distinction, given that the powers that be feel they have to keep revisiting their core characters (or at the very least, keep shoving McQueen down everyone's throat).

If the line is killed off by lenticulars, they won't blame a 'bad idea,' but just say that interest in the line waned, or in other words, "lenticulars were too sophisticated for our audience."

Maybe the guy who came up with Smash Blades still works at Mattel?

I guess it was a stopgap measure to extend the line, although it didn't seem to be doing bad as it was. Things were moving pretty steady until these came out; since then, it has slowed down considerably.

I think Mattel was trying to keep it going until next year's Cars II, but the shelves really are packed with Lightning. I think Cars has the legs to stand (funny for a franchise where none of the characters actually have legs) without this rather uninspired gimmick. It works with Disney collectors, kids, die cast fans, and, I strongly believe, a lot of action figure collectors like myself who see this as the action figure line.

Variety sells; if Mattel's myriad failures of the past decade prove anything, it's that an intense overload of a few main characters can kill a line faster than anything.