Hey y’all, check out this sweet limo I found at the It’s made for these Bratz girls doll and….Hey! Where you going?
Gentlemen, and ladies, of this hobby, I gotta break it to you: If you want vehicles, accessories, buildings and so on, you must make peace with the pink aisle. Simple fact is that dolls and doll accessories have a strong history of being some high quality product made massively available.
And nowhere can that be more apparent than if you’ve ever seen any of the cars made for the Bratz line. Clearly, there was significant effort to get real-world elements into their designs, and even more effort to make them very classy looking, full of features, and by default, making those old molded plastic pink Corvettes Barbie used to get look like crap. I say used to, because some of the newer Barbie ones I’ve seen look like they’ve made some serious progress, probably due to these Bratz ones.
But I had never actually seen this one prior to the chance encounter I had with it a couple weeks ago. First off, the colors- all black and chrome- grabbed my eye immediately. Now, Bratz vehicles are kinda notorious for parts coming off. but this one, thanks to some handy masking tape, still had all it’s doors and windows. The only missing parts were the side mirrors and the roof.
I did a quick search on my phone to see what the total vehicle was supposed to look like, and figured I’d take a crack at completing it, given the entry price. So, a little later, I got a roof via eBay, and now, we’re just short some mirrors. Like I said before, some of the best finds are ones where you can combo your auction hunting with your thrift hunting.
Once I got a look at the complete profile, this massive, wide, and low-riding limo instantly reminded me of one real life vehicle in particular- the Cadillac “Beast,” aka the presidential limousine. This version is obviously a false brand, with stars on the grille and rims. Still, this is plenty realistic, and not at all patronizing as adorning it with hearts and flowers and such- makes sense on a VW Bug, maybe, but this is a big black limo.
And it is big. Nearly 2 feet long, and riding close to 7″ high, this is scaled roughly to the 8″ size Mego accessories often are- Bratz themselves being close to the same height, just with more animated proportions, as I understand it. But that doesn’t rule it out for a smaller, 1/10-1/12 scales necessarily. Next to the also massive DCC Batmobile, it looks pretty comparable. I threw together a couple quick WWE suits to stick in there, and they’re both around 6 1/2 inches. The only mod I’ve made so far is just raising the front seats- I just stuck a bottle cap under them and re-glued them to the floor.
And that’s probably all the customizing I intend to do. In addition to having a great style and paintjob, this car has some awesome built-in features that negate much enhancing. The doors all open, and obviously the roof comes off, but the windows and sun-roof also open and slide. There is a working AM/FM radio in the dash, and the head and taillights appear to light up, though they look a little dim on mine. Add to that some soft rubber tires and all that vac-metal work, and this is a pretty sharp car straight out of the factory.
So, the moral to the story is- never underestimate the power of a girl’s line to completely impress the hell out of you.