Let me share with you my little story on how I even started to think about cases which can be used to transport little die-cast toy cars around the planet.
For a while now me and my wife have been struggling with our kid carrying die-cast cars around. A typical scene would look like this:
1. As we prepare to leave the house to go to wherever my kid wants to bring toy cars with him at the last minute. He stuffs them in his pockets, puts them in a random bag, asks his mom and me to hold them for him as his pockets can only hold 2- 4 cars (he is 5.. he has small pockets).
2. We loose at least one car on the way to wherever… I swear, sometimes I believe our real car is a cannibal vehicle that eats small cars.
3. All hell breaks loose at “wherever” we’ve landed as cars are flying over all of the place.. so much of them that you loose track which ones you’ve even brought with you. You try to find as much of them as you possibly can but it’s a new environment, you can’t exactly ask people to lift their couch because you’re not sure if you’ve find all of the little one’s toys.
4. It always ends in tears and sadness when little Mr. Destruction Derby realizes he just left his favorite police car and an Aston Martin you the dad didn’t even know he had at wherever. And you can’t go back to wherever.. not for a couple of toy cars at least… people will think you’re weird 😀
If you have a kid that likes toy cars you need one… anyone
We were kinda sick of that, as you would imagine, so we got the first bag/case/tote/whatEVER for cars we saw in a random toy store! The extra bonus was that it came with a free car. Also, don’t know if I told you already, this meant that my pockets would now be free of toy cars.
TA DA! This is how it looks with the cars inside. Almost all the cars fit. Only the really weird ones won’t fit. My kid’s been using it to store Matchbox, Siku, Majorette and other various brands of cars.
All in all it does the job and it does it well. You know how many cars your kid has and when you’re leaving home you’re not obsessively looking around for a possible misplaced car. Your kid can also improve and develop his or her’s organizational skills.
But there are a bunch of stuff that’s not that good. The zipper is not that well made… it’s still there but I can see it brake in the near future. My kid who had just turned 5 at the time has had no trouble opening it however and the size is actually perfect for him. Anything bigger may be problematic both for him and me.
The price should be more close to 5 dollars and not 9 like it is now. The main reason is the cheap fabric! Contrary to what I thought the zipper is still in one piece but the fabric tore of on the top:
It can still be used… but doesn’t look as pretty 🙁
Other Hot Wheels storage cases?
So seeing how I was not completely satisfied with this travel tote I decided to go and research what was available on the market. Suddenly I realized almostall of these storage items appear to offer more in value than the 9 car travel tote but hey.. I didn’t see these before I bought the 9 car one. I only saw the one that can hold 100 toy cars but that would be completely unpractical. I do not see a 4-5 year old carrying it around easily ;). Most of these are made by Neat-Oh, who make a bunch of really cool bags and cases from plastic and metal mostly. Several of these can be used not only to transport a few toy cars but can also be used as toy storage due to their size. From colorful design to the cool look there’s something for every boy.
The Racer backpack
Since the 9 car case wasn’t working we decided to go for the Hot Wheels backpack. I really thought it was a perfect since it could fit a lot of cars and could also be used as storage for Hot Wheels tracks. It also features really cool artwork on the inside (a garage and a race track) which made it double as a play mat
Unfortunately after only a couple of months of use the fabric started to tear of, just as it did with the little carry bag. Check out how the outside looks after it has been used for only a couple of months:
You see all the white space? That’s where the original poor quality fabric was. Now check out the first picture which shows the backpack on the inside. The inside has started to break apart as well! This is really no good because when my kid plays with it now it leaves bits and pieces of the torn bag all around the house. It will have to go into the trash :(. I am really sad because of this cause you really should have seen how cute he was walking around with this backpack. SUPER CUTE :). You better step up your game Neat-Oh.
So which one to get?
This is why the next one I get my kid will be a more solid one. If you’re wondering where to buy a Hot Wheels case, here are a bunch of storage cases for sale on Amazon that will do the job!
Yep, it’s one of these that will be our next purchase 🙂
Hope the advice helps!
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