Hello all and welcome to coping with diecast addiction. Please come in, treat yourself to the coffee and doughnuts, find a seat and let’s begin!
First thing is first, our slogan is Live and Let Diecast and represents how we live our lives with addiction. We are here to help you live a healthy, productive, and fruitful life WITH diecast. Like Ricky Bobby driving WITH the cougar (aka fear), you can drive WITH diecast (aka addiction). We are here to show you how!
OK ok, enough with the funny stuff. On a real note I want to tell you about WHAT, HOW, WHY, WHO, and WHERE LALD is. In short this can be called History of LALD and is all for fun so sit back and read along!
To start LALD is all about creating a place for members to gather and show-off/discuss all things diecast, a sanctuary if you will. Professional level photos, big to small HAWLS, epic customs, lustful hunts, fun trades, detailed reviews, informative news, and more are all things you can enjoy here. Variety and quality day in and day out! We are unique in that we make it very easy for everyone to share content and have a great time doing it which is what makes this place so special and important at the same time.
LALD began with a simple trade of a few cars back and forth between a couple friends a couple years ago. That trade was shared on OPPO and caught the attention of a few people right away. Soon the first official draft of the Hot Wheels Exchange Program (HWEP) was written and explosions soon followed. The idea snowballed simply because of how dang cool it was. HWEP is a trade system based on trust and just being a cool person. It is not about money or profit but simply the awesome-ness of trading cool diecast cars for cool diecast cars with cool people. My favorite example of this was a member who sent a box full of cars to a guy who had his collection stolen when he moved. He wanted nothing in return. This was also the first example of an RAOK (random act of kindness). That is what we are all about here.
HERE is a link to that very first HWEP post version 1.0!
Early logo above
HWEP quickly became the avenue for Oppo members to connect, share, and trade. After a couple months or so it seemed we had taken over Oppo and it became clear we needed a home of our own. This lead to the birth of the HWEP sub-blog, which launched June 14th, 2014! With the creation of our new home we quickly realized that we didn’t want to limit content to only Hot Wheels but all the great diecast producers out there. “HWEP” was retired and we formally became Live and Let Diecast!
The infamous pie chart that was the push we needed:
HERE is the first “Intro to LALD” post in the archive section!
Another early logo:
LALD has its place in the diecast world because of all of you. The sharing, killer content, and friendship has led to LALD being such a great place and every one of you is entitled to 7 pats on the back! We exist because you make us exist and that my friends’ is awesome!
LALD is a family made up of each member you see and should be treated like so. Keep it civil and remember that content must remain kid friendly as they are very welcome here too. Beyond the members you may see on a daily basis, your friendly neighborhood mods are always lurking to make sure the ship is in ship-shape so to speak. Those players are as follows:
Jeff – jeffsimmons (Diecaster-in-Chief, media liaison, he and his son are expert track testers!)
Scott – SN210 (LALD Instagram boss, keeps everything humming, has a 1:64 MR2 to match his 1:1)
Philip – philipilihp (Customizer extraordinaire, BMW and Porsche connoisseur!)
Ryan – Frosted the boxy car guy (Expert diecast hunter, just sends people diecasts randomly)
Ulyses – El_ULY (Friendliest guy on the internet, will probably be the first to comment on your post with “Whooooo!” Traveling Torchbug creator and director!)
Bj – mycarneverruns87 (Originator of HWEP, head of HR, coined term “Ban Hammer”)
All of these dudes can easily be contacted through email by putting their name before @liveandletdiecast.com should you have any questions or concerns. We promise we won’t bite!
To finish off this so called “HISTORY of LALD” I want to remind everybody where you can go to get the latest goods for all things diecast. We have our pages spread across Facebook (live and let diecast or live and let diecast marketplace), the Kinjaverse (liveandletdiecast.com), the twitter (@LaLDiecast), and instagram (live_and_let_diecast). Take the time to like us at any and all of our pages and gander at the awesome stuff!
In closing, I want to give a big THANK YOU to all who have helped build this place by sharing and staying awesome! We hope to keep this train rolling and continue to grow. Keep an eye out for upcoming contests, secret super, Traveling Torchbug updates, and maybe even some convention visits if things play out!
VIVA LA LALD!!! - down with the scalpers!!
Be sure to take a look at our guidelines for using LALD HERE