Albeit a slightly dated one, but these things are few and far between in Toronto.
Admittedly the red on white doesn’t make for the easiest photographing, but given it was a TH I had to relieve it of its peg. Also, I only now (rather embarrassingly) discovered that my camera has a focus magnifier, which makes shooting these smaller casts much easier.
To my surprise, the packaging was abnormally pristine. TTT doesn’t get a lot of foot traffic compared to the larger stores, but the trade-off is they often order the older cases and charge a hefty premium. $2.99 CAD is manageable for a few casts, but the more limited sets like 007 are priced around $10. Definitely worth checking out from time to time because there really isn’t anywhere else we can get this stuff locally.
If the TH stamped on the shell doesn’t give it away already, this is a Treasure Hunt P34 - my first TH since I started collecting hotwheels last year. Again, not my preferred livery but it’s neat nonetheless.
The P34 was born in an era of Formula 1 where engineers could go wild and were pushing the forefront of both aerodynamic and mechanical solutions. The “Six Wheeler” was one of the most radical concepts to ever grace the motorsports world, however it’s life would be short lived with regulations at the time ever changing and quickly making the car uncompetitive.
The concept had originally planned to capitalize on cleaning up the air flow on the front of the car to better the downforce on the rear wing. The easiest way to achieve this was to decrease the size of the front wheels, therefore decreasing drag at the expense of reduced tire contact patch per tire. While adding more wheels adds grip (and more braking surface), it adds unnecessarily complex suspension and steering components which have an adverse effect on vehicle weight in the long run.
It’s quite amazing the level of engineering accomplished back then and while we can’t make quite the same strides in modern sport, the spirit of constantly pushing the boundary lives on.
It was quite a joy shooting with a new light box (this time made of semi-gloss material) and my Zeiss lens, though at 70mm it limits the DOF when cropped down to this scale. Still, looking forward to shooting a few more cats before I have to head back for school.
I may be getting my hands on some Tomicas in the next few hours. Maybe.