Hot Wheels

• 1. Introduction

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  Hot Wheels began as a 98-cent toy car in 1968, and in 2000 a single pre-production example sold for close to $70,000. The brand is an American franchise of scale model cars. Elliot Handler, a co-founder of Mattel, invented it, and the company introduced it on the 18th of May 1968. The buyer in 2000 was chasing a Volkswagen microbus that had failed its first tests. What turned a pocket-sized toy for children into a hobby with its own conventions, price guides and newsletters? Why did a car that rolled a little faster than its rivals shake up an entire industry? And how did one die-cast brand end up in racing sponsorships, on streaming services and in a feature film that has changed hands again and again?

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• 2. Hot Rods For Boys

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  Elliot Handler got the idea for Hot Wheels while watching his son Kenneth play with Matchbox cars. Mattel already had Barbie, and Handler wanted a toy line that would appeal to boys in the same way. Matchbox made small models of real production vehicles. Handler pictured something wilder: customized hot rods with big rear tires, superchargers, flame paint jobs, hood blowers and outlandish proportions.

  Engineer Jack Ryan helped Handler begin producing the cars. A Mattel artist named Rick Irons designed the flame logo. Mattel then showed 16 Hot Wheels cars at the 1968 New York Toy Fair.

  That first lineup is known as the Original Sweet 16, and its cars were manufactured in 1967. They were the first of the Red Line Series, named for the red pin stripe on the tires. Harry Bentley Bradley designed eleven of the sixteen castings, with help from Handler and Ryan. Bradley came from the car industry and had designed the body of the full-size Dodge Deora concept car. The first car produced was a dark blue Custom Camaro. Others in the lineup included the Beatnik Bandit, the Python, the Silhouette and the Hot Heap.

  The wheels mattered as much as the styling. Hot Wheels used wide, hard-plastic tires that created far less friction than the narrow metal or plastic wheels on Matchbox cars of the day. The cars tracked smoothly and ran at high speed, which was a great innovation at the time. Mattel sold a racing track set separately, built from bright orange road sections pieced into an oblong loop. One or two faux service stations called superchargers sat along it, with battery-powered spinning wheels that pushed each passing car forward.

  From 1968 onward, the brand disrupted the market for small die-cast models, and Matchbox and other competitors had to rethink their concepts.

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• 3. The Drawing Board

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  Harry Bentley Bradley did not expect the brand to shake up the industry, and he quit Mattel to return to the car industry. When the company asked him to come back, he recommended his good friend Ira Gilford, who had just left Chrysler. Gilford accepted quickly. Some of Hot Wheels' greatest cars, including the Twin Mill and the Splittin' Image, came from his drawing board. The Twin Mill appeared in 1969 and later became the basis for the company's first full-scale replica car, built in 2001.

  The Splittin' Image, the Torero, the Turbofire and the Twin Mill belonged to the Show & Go series. They were the first original in-house designs from Hot Wheels.

  Howard Rees, who worked with Gilford, grew tired of designing cars. He wanted to work on the Major Matt Mason action figure line instead. His friend Larry Wood, who had designed cars with him at Ford, heard about Hot Wheels at a party Rees was holding. Rees offered Wood the job, and by the end of that week Wood was working at Mattel. His first design was the Tri-Baby.

  Paul Tam joined Wood and Gilford, and his first design was the Whip Creamer. He worked for Mattel until 1973. Collectors favor his Evil Weevil, a Volkswagen Beetle with two engines, and his Open Fire, an AMC Gremlin with six wheels. His Six Shooter also had six wheels. The rare Double Header was co-designed with Wood.

  Wood retired in 2019 after more than 40 years of designing cars. His most popular design to date is the Bone Shaker, a fan favorite in the 2006 lineup.

  A new generation arrived in the 2000s. Eric Tscherne and Fraser Campbell joined the team, along with Alec Tam, the son of former designer Paul Tam. Tscherne's Seared Tuner, formerly called the Sho-Stopper, appeared on mainline packaging from 2000 to 2003. The Deora II, one of only two Hot Wheels concept cars ever made into a full-size, functional car, also came out in 2000.

  Designer Ryu Asada died on the 23rd of March 2021, at age 42, after years of suffering from cancer.

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• 4. The Beach Bomb

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  Two surfboards poked out of the back window of the first Beach Bomb prototypes. The prototypes followed the shape of a real Volkswagen Type 2 bus, and the boards nodded to the van's perceived link with the surfing community. They also played on the slang term "beach bum" for someone who spends a lot of time surfing.

  Mattel wanted every car in the young line to work with every playset and stunt track set. This early version failed that goal. It was too narrow to roll well on Hot Wheels track or to be powered by the Super Charger, and it was too top-heavy for high-speed corners.

  Designers including Howard Rees reworked the casting. They extended the side fenders to fit the track width and gave the surfboards a new storage place on the vehicle. They also cut away the roof and replaced it with a full-length sunroof, which lowered the center of gravity. Collectors nickname this production version the Side-loader.

  The original design is now called the Rear-Loader Beach Bomb, or RLBB, and many consider it the Holy Grail of a serious collection. An unknown number were made as test subjects and handed to employees. A regular production Beach Bomb can be worth up to $600, depending on condition. Market prices for an RLBB have easily reached five figures, from $70,000 to $120,000. As of 2018, about 50 rear loaders are known to exist.

  The Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles once showed a pink RLBB in its Hot Wheels exhibit, alone on a rotating platform under glass. In 2002 the Hot Wheels Collectors Club released an updated rear-loading version as a limited edition.

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• 5. Changing Eras

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  In 1970 Mattel adopted the advertising slogan "Go With the Winner", and 43 new cars appeared that year, including the Heavyweights line.

  Only seven new models arrived in 1972. Of the 24 models in 1973, just three were new. The glossy Spectraflame colors gave way to mostly drab, solid enamel, which mainstream Hot Wheels still use today. Low sales, and the fact that most castings were not reused, make the 1972-73 models very collectible.

  In 1974 the Flying Colors line added flashy decals and tampo-printed paint designs, which helped revitalize sales. Competitors copied the idea so they would not be outmaneuvered again. In 1977 the red lines were no longer printed on the wheels, which cut costs. Tastes were also moving from wild hot rods toward realistic cars and trucks, like those from Matchbox.

  The 1980s brought a run of wheel experiments. Hot Ones arrived in 1981 with gold-painted hubs and claims of thinner axles for more speed. Real Riders followed in 1983 with real rubber tires. They were popular but short-lived because of high production costs. Ultra Hot Wheels came in 1984 with another promise of speed. Thermal Color Change paint shifted color in hot or cold water, and the Crack-Ups had a panel that rotated on contact to reveal a dented reverse side. In the late 1980s the Blue Card blister pack replaced the original red and yellow, and its blue became the basis for the colors still used today.

  In 1982 the Chevrolet Corvette ended its curvaceous Mako Shark body style, which had run for almost 15 years. Chevrolet's all-new C4 Corvette arrived late because of assembly line problems. Hot Wheels saw the new model before General Motors unveiled it and made a die-cast 1984 Corvette. GM was angered and almost pulled its license with Mattel. The controversy did let Corvette fans see the new car early.

  In 1989 Mattel gave every car its own collector number. The cards were all blue until 1994, and the numbers climbed as high as 274, skipping some such as 48, 61 and 173. In 1995 the cars were split into series, including a Model Series for that year's new castings that became First Editions in 1996. A Bonus Car program that year caused shortages in stores across the nation.

  Mattel bought Tyco Toys in 1997, and with it came Tyco's old competitor Matchbox. Arguably the two dominant makers of matchbox-sized cars were now under one roof.

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• 6. Collectors And Treasure Hunts

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  Mattel estimates that 41 million children grew up playing with Hot Wheels. It also says the average collector owns more than 1,550 cars, while children between the ages of 5 and 15 own an average of 41. Adult collectors have multiplied since the late 1990s.

  Most people trace the collecting craze to the Treasure Hunt series of 1995. It had 12 cars a year, and 15 beginning in 2011. The original production run was 10,000 of each car worldwide, a number that has risen with demand. In 2007 Mattel created a two-tiered system. Super Treasure Hunts carry premium wheels and Spectraflame paint, and from 2015 they also carry a gold circle-flame logo on the card.

  Mike Strauss has been called the father of Hot Wheels collecting. He has organized two collectors' events a year in some form since 1986, and from 2001 they included the Hot Wheels Collectors Nationals. He also published the quarterly Hot Wheels Newsletter and wrote Tomart's Price Guide to Hot Wheels, which almost every collector uses. Strauss sold his collection in 2011 and retired from the newsletter.

  The hobby is relatively inexpensive compared with coin, stamp or Barbie collecting. Mainline cars cost about $0.97 to $1.08 until the early 2020s and about $1.25 by the mid-2020s. In real terms the price has dropped significantly. Rarer cars can sell for many hundreds or even thousands of dollars.

  At the premium end, the Car Culture line started in 2016 with metal bodies and bases and rubber tires. It debuted with Japan Historics, a set of five Japanese sports cars. In 2008, to mark the making of its four billionth car, Hot Wheels produced a diamond-studded model worth US$140,000. It was cast in white gold, with 2,700 diamond chips totaling almost 23 karats and rubies for taillights.

  The date on a car's base is the copyright date of the casting, not its release year. The Twin Mill still carried a 1969 copyright on its 2019 releases. Since 2008 cars also carry a base code that starts with a letter, with A for 2008, followed by two digits for the week of manufacture. A code of A52 means the fifty-second week of 2008. Mainline production switches to the next model year around the end of June or the beginning of July.

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• 7. Sizzlers And Sponsors

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  A tiny rechargeable battery and a built-in motor powered the Sizzlers, which arrived in 1970 and became popular right away. They ran on the regular orange track, and Mattel later made the black Fat Track, three lanes wide with steep banked curves. Advertisers called the 90-second charge "the longest minute and a half in a kid's life". That charge gave up to five minutes of run time. Mattel stopped making Sizzlers in 1978, and the pull-back Scorchers replaced them.

  In the 1990s Mattel's trademark on the Sizzlers name lapsed, and the toy company Playing Mantis released a NASCAR-based line. It was taken off the market after Mattel filed a lawsuit. Sizzlers returned in 2006 in an exclusive deal with Target, which discontinued the line as of January 2009.

  In 1970 the professional drag racers Don Prudhomme, called "The Snake", and Tom McEwen, called "The Mongoose", were sponsored by Hot Wheels. Their rivalry was manufactured for publicity. It marked drag racing's first major non-automotive corporate sponsor. That year Hot Wheels also sponsored Trans-Am driver Dan Gurney. In 1997 a deal with NASCAR driver Kyle Petty led to replicas of stock cars.

  From 1999 to 2018 Hot Wheels held a Monster Jam license for diecast trucks and a Hot Wheels-themed truck in live shows. The partnership ended in 2019 after Feld Entertainment signed a ten-year toy deal with Spin Master. Hot Wheels then started its own Monster Trucks live show, and Monster Jam called it plagiarism.

  At the 2002 24 Hours of Le Mans, Hot Wheels logos appeared on the sidepods of two MG-Lola EX257 prototypes. Australian stunt rider Matt Mingay suffered serious facial injuries in 2016, and Robby Gordon drove the No. 2 Hot Wheels truck for him at Townsville. Hot Wheels and Castrol returned to support Mingay's racing return in 2020.

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• 8. Screens And Legends

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  For its 35th anniversary in 2003, Hot Wheels released the full-length animated film Hot Wheels Highway 35 World Race. A sequel series called Hot Wheels AcceleRacers followed in four movies. Its drivers included gangs such as Teku, the Metal Maniacs, the Racing Drones and the Silencerz. On the 29th of August 2009, Hot Wheels Battle Force 5 debuted on Cartoon Network. It was Mattel's first animated episodic series and a co-production of Nelvana and Nerd Corps Entertainment. NBC's Hot Wheels: Ultimate Challenge, hosted by Rutledge Wood, premiered on the 30th of May 2023, and Netflix premiered Hot Wheels Let's Race on the 4th of March 2024.

  Games began with a 1984 title for the Commodore 64. In 2017 Forza Horizon 3 received a Hot Wheels expansion, and Forza Horizon 5: Hot Wheels followed in 2022 with over 120 miles of track. Milestone S.r.l. released Hot Wheels Unleashed on the 30th of September 2021.

  A live-action film has been in development for years. In January 2003 Columbia Pictures announced rights to a Hot Wheels film with McG attached to direct. The premise followed a young man who steals his father's racecar and passes through a Back to the Future style portal to reconcile with him. Rights moved to Warner Bros. in 2009 and Legendary Pictures in 2011, and Justin Lin signed on to direct in 2016. The option later expired and returned to Mattel. In 2019 Mattel Films and Warner Bros. agreed to partner, and Bad Robot was announced as producer in 2022. On the 7th of July 2025, Jon M. Chu was attached to direct.

  Since 2018 the Hot Wheels Legends Tour has held 18 events a year at Walmart locations across the United States. Over 111,000 people attend, and about 5,000 cars are entered. One car from each event is considered for recreation as a Hot Wheels casting, and one finalist wins. On the 9th of October 2024, Formula One announced a multi-year Hot Wheels partnership. The 2025 winner, built by Paweł Czarnecki, is a 1990 Fiat 126p called "Delta XS", and under the program's rules it is due to be recreated as a casting the following year.

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