After Part 1 (read it here) and our recent work on Better Sorting and Filtering (more on that here) this is the final part of fixing our Hot Wheels Database Items. We have more Hot Wheels pages than any other website out there and by quite a margin. While that is great it also created issues in finding the right page. Rob and others are working hard to continue to subvariant (which is Part I) and we have started two more projects.
Annual Hot Wheels Subjects were useful before we introduced the new Date Filters in the Database and Marketplace. Now they are obsolete, create too many Search results in Subject searches and often don’t have an image or description. We are now merging them into their Parent Subjects. Here is an example –
Members can just use our new filters (Brands, Series, Production Status, Release Date and more) to for example just show Night Burnerz from 2014 to 2016 and sort them by Release Dates. We already removed more than 200 of these surplus Subjects with another 1,500 or so to go (we do the same for Matchbox).
Hot Wheels (and Matchbox since they are owned by Mattel) have a bewildering reference number system. Many of them have 3 numbers that look like this Collector # 282/365, Series 4/5, Toy # FJV61. We recently introduced the Manufacturer ID that can house what Mattel coins the Toy Number, so here FJV61 (no need to use the # character). The Manufacturer ID can be searched for. That leaves the first two numbers that we need to discuss. Series like the 2018 Mopars that have only one Reference # already sort nicely –
Lastly, Squad Members have been adding more UPC Barcodes (a particular thanks to Kirk from KMJ Diecast for doing this). That means that Hot Wheels collectors can start to check Hot Wheels with our App (we got both Android and iOS versions now).
That leaves only some cleaning up from the Subvariant Project (for example removing separate fields for Baseplate Material, Interior Color or Window Color as these are only really relevant if there are say the same model with creme or light blue interior and those would be marked well as Subvariants) and the ability to deselect certain Production Statuses from view (say Customs, Errors and Prototypes).
Please let us have your comments here or if you are a Volunteer in our Facebook group.
More Hot Wheels than anything!!! I thought I used to see a count of items returned somewhere after I did a search. Is it still there, or can you bring it back? For example, how many Alfa Romeos are in the DB?
That is on the Wish List (is just very processing-intensive so slows the site down).
Re Hot Wheels, because there are sooooooooooooooo many (yes, that many) of them that they show hobbyDB’s weaknesses off first and fixing those helps everybody later down the road (there equally many Britains figures or Wiking models but we do not have them and others yet).
It is the same with our 70,000+ Hard Rock Cafe pins. They have no official names which forces us to improve our search which then benefits everybody.
I am having a problem with making an item to show as a subvariant under a particular version. I have tried to add as a subvariant by finding an item that is identical with the exception that it has different wheels, mabe a different color interior, or even as an error but when I go back to look for the item it shows as the main view and the original I made the subvariant of is not longer listed. What am I doing wrong??
Hi Jay, please send me the link and we will look it (the Subvariant code is not the most easiest yet, we plan some changes to it).
I have also discovered anothe thing when looking for a particular Hot Wheels Drag Bus. There are two distinct differnet castings, one is the Drag Bus from 1995 and then the later version of the T1. During a recent search they are separated however I ave noticed a casting tha is an actual custom Drg Bus that is another separate mold (and appears to be a custom mold, not done by Mattel) being listed under the Hot Wheels Drag Bus. These should be in their own catagory where they do not show up when looking for the Hot Wheels Drag Bus. I can look again and provide actual links later if necessary so this can be fixed.
Hi Jay, just flag them and we get it taken care off.
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