Monorail Series 1: Cars Explained

Nick LoCicero

Monorail Series 1: Cars Explained

Monorail Series 1: Cars
Released Date: March 27 (DLR APs), March 30 (WDW and DLR)
Price: $11.95
Details: 12 figure mystery box set. Each figure is shaped like a Monorail car and is 4.5 inches long. Maria Clapsis and Thomas Scott designed the figures, Lin Shih designed the mold shape and Eric Caszatt designed the packaging. I love the retro look of the artwork:

Update: 3/21/12 Here are some photos of the Orlando D-Street display case from Austin. In the first shot, you can see the underside of the monorail showing a space where the rail would be.
Underside of Lightning and Mater
Full Display
Ka-Chow! McQueen’s close up
Sheriff and Ramone
Lightning McQueen
Photo from Vinylnation.net and Damang6388
Chick Hicks
Photo from Vinylnation.net and Damang6388
Doc Hudson
Photo from Vinylnation.net and Damang6388
Filmore
Photo from Vinylnation.net and Damang6388
Finn McMissile
Photo from Vinylnation.net and Damang6388
Flo
Photo from Vinylnation.net and Damang6388
Francesco Bernoulli
Photo from Vinylnation.net and Damang6388
Red
Photo from Vinylnation.net and Damang6388
Mater
Photo from Vinylnation.net and Damang6388
Ramone
Photo from Vinylnation.net and Damang6388
Sheriff
Photo from Vinylnation.net and Damang6388
Holly Shiftwell
(Chaser)

22 thoughts on “Monorail Series 1: Cars Explained”

  1. I’ve been dying to find out if the bottom of these actually has the void for the “mono” rail?!? None of the photos I’ve found show the front or back to see this clearly. Does anyone have insight on this? I think if they left the void it would make the set more appealing to a broader audience.

    • Nope it doesn’t say void anywhere on any of them. We just got back from Disney World and bought several of these for my son. I just checked and I found nothing like that on them.

  2. I don’t like Cars very much, but I am a fan of this set. Some of them look more interesting than others. I’d love to get my hands on Fillmore.

  3. I had a very… ‘un-Disney’ thought when I heard this series discussed on the show. Seeing them ? Yeah.

    • Actually, to me, the unique bottom adds to the design. It takes it from a rectangular design and makes it a little different. (But probably not enough to change my mind about purchasing) -MC

  4. no interest…i know that disney’s official position is that VM is a brand, not a mold…but VM will always be the mickey-mold to me…

  5. The Monorail mold looks too much like my son’s Thomas the Tank Engine wooden train set cars. If they had the actual Disney Monorail paint schemes on them, I would probably collect the set. The regular set of 11 could be the different paint jobs we see today with the chaser being something like the special Tron trains. There could even be a variant of the chaser……a yellow one for the WDW version and blue for the DLR version. Another thought would be to have other past paint jobs like the Mark I thru VI. You could throw in the new Mark VII red, blue and orange DLR versions. How about the Monorails at Tokyo Disney and HKDL that have slightly different versions of Mickey-head windows?

    There are so many interesting designs and paint schemes of actual Monorails that Disney could sell a ton of without resorting to what I feel is a flaky selection of characters like Cars.

  6. We just got back from Disney and these are awesome in person! There is a void underneath and they are totally cool. We love vinylmations and the shape did not take away from this for us. I think it is ok for them to have different shapes, for a special set of vinylmations to exist per se. My son loves them and we have almost collect the whole set with several duplicates unfortunately. :( But we can always try to sell those. Overall, love these! I am not sure I would want a ton of different vinylmation shape designs, but this one was definitely appropriate! :) Just an opinion.

  7. We have found 2 Holley Shiftwell chaser cars. One does not have a sunroof. I can’t find any evidence of a variance. Could this be an error?

    • No, the figure it self is not an error, but it has come to the attention of Vinylmation collectors that Holy is NOT the chaser despite being the mystery figure on the box. You should have received only one Chick Hicks in your case? That, in effect, is the real chaser being seeded only one per case. We did an article a few weeks back (http://destinationvinylmation.com/2012/04/smoke-and-mirrors-hinder-the-car-chase/) Disney has not publicly confirmed this, but it seems to be true.

  8. Okay, I’m good with that, but regardless, one of the Holley Shiftwell cars does not have a sunroof. I’m thinking it may be an error.

    • I am sorry we misunderstood your question. Yesterday we contacted the artist, Thomas Scott, and he confirmed there is NO variant in this set.

  9. Cool, it sounds like I have an error. I’m not sure if these type of mistakes are collectable or not.

Comments are closed.