There is something about the toy industry that has always fascinated me. Like the film industry, trends tend to be cyclic. Themes come and go, only to come around again. You may have a glut of Zombie Movies for a year or so, then nothing for a decade. And toys also enjoy the same cyclic trends. But some toys just have continuing staying power. And Scalextric is by far the king of the all time classic “toys”.
Now, I use the term “toy” very loosely, because its not really a toy. Then again, its not really a game either. Anyone that has held a throttle in the hand and watched a car navigate sharp turns, crossovers and chicanes will know that its actually an “event”.
Scalextric has always been a big thing for me. Typically, once a year, it all comes out and we’ll have a good old “play”.
As you may already know, we do a lot of scanning for Hornby, specifically for their model trains. But we also do a lot of cars for them as well, for their Scalextric brand. So, as a consequence of this scanning for them, I decided to have a set up in the office. After all, who else can hosnestly say that they get a chance to actually race their 3D laser scans???
So, last year we were given a delightful BMW 125 to scan, with the Ebay Decals. As scans go, this had it all…. reflective surfaces, deep blacks and of course…. glass.
But we smashed it (not literally). Its always nice to know that someone, somewhere is enjoying the car, blissfully unaware of the work that goes into getting something like this to market.
The design team take our meshed data, and build their cad on top for the tooling. All in, this can take about a year. And the first we know of it is when the courier delivers a “car package” from our good friends at Hornby with another car, as scanner by MoAss.
And here is ours, minus the Ebay livery. I actually prefer this version. Those BMW 125 lines look amazing, and of course, they are 100% accurate. This means the di hard throttle heads can actually spend more time enjoying the race as oppossed to worrying about incorrect wheel arches etc (I hear they are quite an obsessive bunch, hence the scanning!).
