Johnny Lightning bites the dust....

"BlazinAce - Doctor of Internal Combustion" (pbs) 11/04/2013 at 14:42 • Filed to: Die Cast cars

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Just received the notice on my news feed... Johnny Lightning is going out of business after several years as one of the coolest brands in small scale cars. I'm sad... Even if some of their castings weren't spot on accurate in terms of size and scale, they were still some of the coolest out there, with a character all of their own. Part of that character, at least to me, was that they'd always try to do stuff no one else was doing, with no regards to things such as themes, series and uniformity. The final years of the brand, with the Forever 64 releases, were pretty much a free for all mashup of automotive culture. If it was cool, they'd do it.

Police cars in Drag Racing trim, with full backing from the Beat the Heat program? Sure. Land yachts setup for demolition derbies, with ridiculous graphics and crazy stuff written on the fenders? Why not? Hot Rods in the most traditional sense of the world? Obligatory. Movie cars, sometimes made without the consent of the studios that held their rights, copyright be damned?

You bet!

JL was kinda like the Mazda of Die cast companies. They did stuff no other brand would simply because they could, they didn't have a large company with sales projections and target markets telling them what sells and what doesn't. On the other hand, the lack of a large company backing them made it harder and harder to maintain the quality fans were used to, and the eventual sale to Takara Tomy, of Tomica fame, crippled their ability to be original. With costs still on the rise, and quality still on the drop, Tomy decided to axe the company to avoid cannibalizing sales from their Tomica line which, while cool, just isn't JL cool.

Still, in a sense JL lives on. Autoworld, which I mentioned several times already when they released their first wave of 1:64 scale cars, is managed and staffed by the same responsible for the Pre-Takara-Tomy JL, but they haven't yet shown the same kind of originality I got used to from JL, and with prices going up and sales going down, I'm not sure they ever will.

Like I said, terrible news...

Arch Duke Maxyenko, Shit Talk Extraordinaire > BlazinAce - Doctor of Internal Combustion 11/04/2013 at 14:46

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Sads I have a few JL cars, including a Tucker.

$kaycog > BlazinAce - Doctor of Internal Combustion 11/04/2013 at 15:13

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That's a real shame. I have five JL Ford GT's, still in their package.

BlazinAce - Doctor of Internal Combustion > $kaycog 11/04/2013 at 15:16

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JL Gts are awesome. I have only one, thanks to the general unaivalability of Johnny Lightning in Brazil. A black with grey stripes one that came in a two pack with a yellow Shelby Cobra and a Drag Racing Christmas tree.

$kaycog > BlazinAce - Doctor of Internal Combustion 11/04/2013 at 15:34

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Neat. I never thought of it until you posted this, but I guess I haven't seen many, if any, JL's around for awhile.

daender > BlazinAce - Doctor of Internal Combustion 11/04/2013 at 15:37

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I have two 1:64 JL's before they were taken over by Tomy and maybe six after that. You could tell there was a small decrease in quality; more minor paint errors, the packaging was seriously downgraded (it warps like hell), and like Hot Wheels the metal bases were replaced with plastic. However, it seemed like they still put effort into their 1:24 line. I have a pre-Tomy yellow Superbird and post-Tomy Duster and White-Lightning Cuda, the quality appears to be pretty same except the post-Tomy cars no longer use metal bases and the Cuda didn't have opening doors like the others (or painted mirrors).

BlazinAce - Doctor of Internal Combustion > daender 11/04/2013 at 15:58

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Yeah, that was all part of the restructuring the brand went through to be profitable again... Despite the drop in quality, what I'm going to miss the most is definitely the model selection.

Shiftright > BlazinAce - Doctor of Internal Combustion 11/05/2013 at 13:34

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NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

scott pacini > Shiftright 06/06/2014 at 01:24

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hello fellow collectors, it is too bad jl bit the dust, they were the best collectible diecast out there, the most jl ever made of one model diecast was 20,000 that is nothing compared to hotwheels, matchbox, greenlight,m2, etc. all those companys made well over 50,000 to 100,000 or even more so when your talking about mattel, they over produce then so much that it would take 50 years from the day you bought it to make a decent resale on them, greenlight is doing the same thing with there greenmachines, does any one know what the % of a greenmachine is to a regular greenlite, i never seen it publicly in a magizine or on a web site, jl always let the public know what the % was with wls 1 to 100 so the diecast that started out like hotwheels and then went thru a metamorphosis of a change into a collectors diecast and not a toy, so never take that jl out of the blister pack because it drops 85% in value and all those people that sell them on the bid or sell sites don,t believe a word of them being mint out of the package, if there out of the package there not worth more than 3.99 that is why they made those blister packs for that soul reason, all in all stick the best which is johnnylightning they,ll be worth something one day, the rest are just like what the sports card business became, over produced and the big companys like mattel make millions of them.

Shiftright > scott pacini 06/06/2014 at 04:58

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Longest sentence ever

scott pacini > Shiftright 06/24/2014 at 10:53

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good i,m glad you read it

Shiftright > scott pacini 06/24/2014 at 15:39

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You really should look into spelling and grammar. It's a thing now.

scott pacini > Shiftright 06/27/2014 at 15:09

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who are you an english professor it a simple site on diecast my friend, don,t take it too far.

Shiftright > scott pacini 06/27/2014 at 16:56

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We're not cave men anymore. We go to school so we can communicate effectively with others because that's how things get done correctly. If you want to write without any regard for simple punctuation, knock yourself out. I'm a fan of education and knowledge to do things right because that leads to progress. But hey, that's me...

scott pacini > Shiftright 08/09/2014 at 18:34

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i could see if you couldn,t read it but you did som if you want to correct every thing start with yourself asshole.

scott pacini > Shiftright 08/09/2014 at 18:34

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i could see if you couldn,t read it but you did som if you want to correct every thing start with yourself asshole.

Shiftright > scott pacini 08/09/2014 at 21:46

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You keep on being an ignorant shithead then, shithead. You seem to enjoy being uneducated, and it really doesn't affect me in the least. More enlightened people would appreciate a correction because they want to learn. Learning is a good thing. It's part of progress and evolution. You can't even use correct grammar in your infantile insulting reply! So much fail!... You know the internet is good for more than just porn and time sucking blog exchanges with strangers right? The ones of us who care about doing things right, quality, education, bettering themselves, etc will keep getting better jobs, making more money and contributing to the world being a better place for everyone, even dolts like you.