New Free Online Game
There's a brand new game at the ChevronCars.com website.
It's a fun little Flash game. It seems like a simple game, but the more you play, the more you'll want to play. The game is called Pearl Hunt, and basically you have to go underwater and hunt for pearls, then get them through a maze into your underwater treasure chest. Of course there are obstacles and little tricks along the way!
You can go play Pearl Hunt now. Or see all the free online games at ChevronCars.com.
Tell us your tips and tricks for getting a good score on this game by clicking on the Comments link below.
Posted: Apr 28, 2005
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Collectors Pay Top Dollar for Rare Chevron Cars
Certain Chevron Cars are selling for top dollar at online auction sites, with select individual cars listed for up to $80-$100 each.
The most valuable cars are some of the Special Edition or Limited Edition cars that are no longer available except at online auction sites such as eBay — particularly Hope 2001 or Davey Driver, for example.
The Hope 2001 car was made in October 2001 as a Special Edition car to commemorate breast cancer awareness. Hope was only sold in service stations at the time.
Davey Driver is a green Limited Edition car (not to be confused with his purple regular-edition sister, Danni Driver), and was available both in service stations and online. Davey was made in June, 1998 and sold out around the Summer of 2004. No more Davey Driver cars will ever be made. Davey sells for about $50 at auction.
Other cars are also in high demand, like the recently released Faith breast cancer awareness car (October, 2004), as there were fewer of these cars made than some of the other models. Though Faith is no longer available at the Chevron toy cars website, the car is still reasonably priced at online auction sites. You should be able to find Faith at an online auction site as well.
Posted: Apr 25, 2005
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The Secret Games that Test Your Knowledge
We've heard from Grandparents who say they don't like the computer games as much as the kids do, but they still want to win Chevron Cars game prizes. A lot of the prizes aren't items you can buy, and aren't available elsewhere (like the Chevron Cars watches).
We've found that there are a couple of games on the site that are more about reading and information than they are about racing and such, and there are prizes for these games too! Not as many people know about these games, so it may be easier to win some prizes.
Check out the Answering Machine game, where you can win a different car every month. You can see the rules of the game at #5 off the above link.
The other game is called Know-it-All. To play this game, go to the Know-it-All articles page and then log in to your Chevron Cars account in the left column (or create a new account if you don't have one already).
Know-It-All is a fun game that lets you answer questions in the Tribune articles. Just find articles with questions to answer. Questions appear at the top and bottom of articles. You increase your score in each subject by answering the questions correctly.
You'll have both a Monthly and an Ongoing score. The 5 people with the most questions answered correctly win a Chevron Cars watch. It's best to start playing this game at the beginning of every month because you can keep growing your score every day. Once the month has ended, the score is erased and you start all over again.
If you want a chance at some prizes, and you like to learn new things, check out these fun games!
Posted: Apr 19, 2005
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New Compact Car Suggested by a Fan
A Chevron Cars fan wrote in with a picture of a cute car that he thinks should be made into a new toy Chevron Car. He loves the Subaru 360, and thinks it would be a great car to add to the Chevron Cars Family.
"The car in real life gets 66 mpg, and this cute little car could demonstrate fuel conservation. It is my favorite car in real life and would make a great addition to the Chevron Car's line. The yellow car picture shows how the car has a "smile".
He suggest that the car could be named Chris Compact or Kelsey Kompact.
Thanks for the photos of this adorable car!
Posted: Apr 13, 2005
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Your Ideas for a New Chevron Car?
Alan, a Chevron Cars fan, wrote in saying he'd like to hear everyone's ideas of what car they want to see next.
Maybe somebody in the Chevron Toy Car department will read this blog! Since Chevron is constantly working on new ideas and these projects can be in development for an indefinite period of time, be advised that any ideas you post here will be treated as non-confidential and non-proprietary, and Chevron is free to use your ideas for any purpose without compensation to you.
If you want to tell Alan and other Chevron Cars fans around the world about your dream Chevron Car, just click the Comments link below!
Posted: Apr 8, 2005
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Get Creative: Make Your Own Accessories!
Gracie and Grandmother Alyce sent us some great photos today. "The cars need gas....so we made our own pumps," they wrote. The Chevron gas pumps they made come complete with filler hoses, gas price and the Chevron logos (click on the photo to see a larger version).
Gracie has her new Chevron gas pumps and her Chevron Cars set up on a little town layout. You can see Sally School Bus, Patty Patrol, Horace and Trailer, the Baby Cars and many other great Chevron Cars.
Excellent job on the photos and the gas pumps -- you have a great collection!
Posted: Apr 7, 2005
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Chevron Die-Cast Toy Cars
You all know about the lovable Chevron toy cars with the great personalities and cute smiles. But there are some avid collectors out there that have continually inquired about Chevron's other toy collection, the die-cast metal toy cars.
The die-cast collection is not part of the cars featured on ChevronCars.com. The die-cast collection of classic trucks is manufactured by Lledo of London.
The most recent trucks produced by Lledo are: a 1930 Model A Refinery Bus, a 1935 Ford V-8 Semi Truck and Trailer, and a 1939 Chevrolet Panel Van.
You can check out the entire collection at an online auction site such as eBay, where you can find Lledo die cast cars for sale.
Posted: Apr 7, 2005
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Your Favorite Chevron Car?
Everyone has their favorite cars. If you love Summer time and ice cream, maybe yours is Summer Scoop? Do you remember the days when your hamburger was served by a girl on roller skates? Then Hank Hot Rod may be the car for you. Who's your favorite Chevron Car?
Posted: Apr 6, 2005
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History of Chevron Cars Commercials
Ten years ago, Chevron launched the now-famous advertising campaign featuring the lovable claymation Chevron Cars.
The inspiration for creating the car characters ad campaign for Chevron came from an associate creative director at the ad agency Young & Rubicam named Charlie McQuilkin. He had seen a claymation movie called Creature Comforts, and thought the technique would work really well for a new Chevron campaign.
The company partnered with Aardman Animations, the creators of the Creature Comforts film, and produced a number of T.V. commercials over the past ten years.
The hardest part about bringing the car characters to life was finding the right voice to match each car's personality. To find the right voices for the car characters, Americans from across the country were "interviewed" about what it would be like to be a car and why an engine would want to have new Chevron gasolines with Techron. Once the voices were recorded, the artists at Aardman went to work to make the characters and produce the final commercials.
Posted: Apr 6, 2005
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Printable Car Timeline
The Car Timeline is now availalbe in a printer-friendly version so you can print out a list of all the Chevron Cars ever made. Just visit the Chevron Cars "Meet the Cars" section. Select File --> Print in your web browser to print the pages: Car Timeline page.
Posted: Apr 6, 2005
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Cool Gallery Tour
Have you visited the Car Timeline page yet? Looks like the graphic on the top has recently changed and now it's a cool Flash movie where the dogs walk through a gallery of pictures of all the cars. Just put your mouse over the right side of the Car History banner at the top of the Car Timeline page and they should start walking along.
Posted: Apr 6, 2005
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Cary Carrier and Sally School Bus
As many of you know, Cary and Sally have been out of stock for a while. Chevron Cars is working on getting more of these cars, and they should be back in stock around May, 2005. Check this Blog for the most up-to-date information about the Chevron Cars.
(5/3/2005 UPDATE: ETA for Sally is the week of May 16, 2005. ETA for Cary Carrier is May 25, 2005.)
New cars, back-in-stock items, game prizes and other special offers are announced in the Chevron Cars email newsletter.
Update: Cary Carrier and Sally School Bus are no longer available.
Posted: Apr 5, 2005
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Poster of all the Chevron Cars
There's a pull-out poster of Chevron Cars in the Chevron Cars Activity Book. The poster includes all the cars except Riley Roadster -- from #1 Sam Sedan (now retired) through the Special Edition Faith 2004 car, released in October, 2004. The poster is about 8.5" x 27.5". Right now the activity book is offered as a daily prize in the Snowboard Challenge game at ChevronCars.com.
You Snowboard Challenge high score winners, use the Comments link to tell us your secret for getting such great scores!
Posted: Apr 5, 2005
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Claymation Production and History
The Chevron Cars commercials are produced in a 3-D animation process, also known as "claymation" (short for clay-animation).
The history of claymation dates back to about 1897, with the introduction of a material called plasticine. In more modern times, a man named Art Clokey started producing claymation advertising films in the 1950's, and then went on to make the famous Gumby and Pokey television show, which brought claymation into the households of many children. The Gumby and Pokey series ran from 1956 until 1963, and Gumby made a come-back in the 1980's.
Other famous claymation sequences include a skeleton scene in the 1963 Jason and the Argonauts, the 1985 animated production of The Adventures of Mark Twain and the 1988 Meet the Raisins by Will Vinton.
In 1989 Nick Park created the wonderful Wallace and Gromit animated series and later went on to produce a number of other films starring Wallace and Gromit before Aardman Animations worked on the famous Chevron Cars commercials starting in 1995.
While conventional commercials are shot on 35 mm film at 25 frames-per-second, the claymation production requires stop-action photography, shooting up to 30 individual frames for each second of film.
The car character model in each and every frame has to be hand-sculpted by the animator to slightly change the car's expression or movement, then the scene is shot by the camera. This process slowly repeats itself one frame at a time. And there's much more to it than changing the form of the mouths. The animators try to capture eye movements, glances, shrugs, eyebrow raises -- every little detail that gives personality to these cute little cars.
It's amazing how much work goes into each second of these film clips, but the result of all this hard work fills each Chevron Car with life and personality. You can view some of the more recent Chevron Cars T.V. film clips at the ChevronCars.com website Drive-in Theater.
Posted: Apr 4, 2005
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Riley and Maddie Visit Pakistan
How far can they drive? Omar from San Francisco, California recently took his two favorite Chevron cars, Riley and Maddie, with him to Lahore, Pakistan—almost exactly half-way around the world.
There he photographed them visiting Jehanghir's Tomb. Jehanghir was one of the greatest Mughal Emperors of India, which he ruled from 1605 until he died in 1628. His wife Nur Jehan, the only Mughal Empress whose name appeared on coins of the time, built this beautiful, delicate tomb in the decade following his death. It uses red sandstone and inlaid white marble and precious stones. When Nur Jehan died, she was buried in another beautiful red sandstone tomb nearby. Theirs was a great Mughal love story even before the most well-known one, between Jehanghir's son Shah Jehan and Shah Jehan's wife, Mumtaz Mahal. Shah Jehan built one of the most famous buildings in the world, the Taj Mahal, in Agra, India, to honor of his wife.
We look forward to a photograph of a Chevron car visiting that glorious place one day, and look forward to seeing other photos that our visitors send from wherever they may be!
Posted: Apr 4, 2005
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Greeting Cards Online
Did you know you can send a special Chevron Cars birthday card online? Or send a picture of your favorite car as an e-card? Check out the Cards Gallery to see all the available greeting cards.
Posted: Apr 3, 2005
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Buying Chevron Cars
Periodically, people ask me where they can buy the Chevron Cars, or ask if a particular car is available for sale.
You can find all the available Chevron Cars in the ChevronCars.com KidsShop. There are three different sections: Toy Cars where you'll find all the cars, Specials where you'll find sale items and other deals, and Cool Stuff where you'll find mini cars, T-shirts, baseball caps, a sunshade and other Chevron Cars items.
You may also be able to find the cars at a Chevron station in your area. You can find a list of stations, along with contact information by visiting the Find a Chevron website.
If you don't see an ADD TO CART button in the Chevron Cars KidsShop, it is because you may have registered the account using your child's birth-date. See: Where's the "Add to Cart" Button for more info on this topic.
Posted: Apr 2, 2005
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