By: Chuck Miller
Having Fun

Redlines, OrangeTrack and Blue Streaks

NOTE: This article was originally written by Chuck Miller and published in Toy Collector Magazine in 2008.
Hot Wheels celebrates 40 years
Designers from six automobile manufacturers, working from a challenge to celebrate a legendary company’s 40th production year, built prototype cars with names like the General Motors Chevroletor, the Mitsubishi Double Shotz, the Dodge XP-07 and the Ford Gangster Grin. The cars, which were displayed on Oct. 20, 2007 as part of the Specialty Equipment Market Association trade show in Las Vegas, were among the winning designs that encompassed a core concept of speed, power, performance and attitude, while still retaining the distinctive stylings of their respective automotive brands. There was one more requirement for these vehicles. They had to successfully perform a loop the loop on the design company’s distinctive plastic orange track. The design company, in this case, was Mattel, manufacturers of Hot Wheels, arguably the most popular collectible die-cast vehicle product line in toy history. Beginning in 1968, when the first blister-packaged Hot Wheels cars were sold in toy and variety stores, the brand has captured the imagination of millions of junior car enthusiasts. Even today, collectors scour the Internet looking for production variations, glittering untouched classics and alternatively painted shades. They search for cars with names like Beach Bomb, Silhouette and Whip Creamer. They argue about whether a Splittin’ Image could defeat a Twin Mill in a head-to-head race. But most of all, they appreciate Hot Wheels for what they represent—the love affair America has with cars, speed and style.

The expert

For Michael Zarnock, the author of seven different books on collecting Hot Wheels cars, and a recent inductee into the Guinness Book of World Records for possessing the largest collection of different Hot Wheels cars (8,128 at last count), hundreds of his prized possessions sit in a special display at the Children’s Museum of Utica, N.Y. It’s one of the most popular exhibits in the whole museum, with displays of orange track, packaging, promotional tie-ins and branded products, all bearing the distinctive “Hot Wheels” flame logotype. “One of my prized possessions is a Hot Wheels Club Kit,” said Zarnock as he displayed his collection for Toy Collector Magazine. “For a dollar, you could send away to Hot Wheels and receive a box with one of three possible cars inside; you could receive either a Plymouth King ‘Cuda, a Mustang Boss Hoss or a Camaro. As a kid, I would write letters to Mattel, send them a dollar and ask them to send me wheels and stickers and all kinds of things. One day in the mail, I got a Club Kit. I must have been one of the first kids to get a Club Kit; it was the coolest thing. Each car today on the collector’s market can run from $50-75, and the Club Kit and packaging can run $75, so you’re looking at $300-400 for the complete master set today.”

The history

Before Hot Wheels entered the market in 1968, companies like Matchbox, Corgi and Dinky dominated the market for die-cast cars. These toys were mostly tiny replicas of utilitarian vehicles—fire engines, dump trucks and tractors —and the cars that were produced in the 1960s were designed not for racing, but for pushing around a small village with one’s fingers. In 1966, Elliott Handler watched as his grandchildren played with some of the popular die-cast cars of the day. Handler was the co-founder of Mattel Toys, and realized that there might be an opportunity to create a new product for his company—a product that might even rival Mattel’s flagship attraction, the Barbie doll. Handler asked his top research and development specialist, a former Navy missile engineer named Jack Ryan, to produce a line of die-cast cars for Mattel. Ryan contacted one of General Motors’ top designers, Harry Bentley Bradley, to work with the design team. The name of the product, Hot Wheels, came from an exclamation Handler made upon seeing Bradley’s custom hot rod in the parking lot: “Man, those are some hot wheels.” Everything about Hot Wheels cars was radically different than any die-cast cars previously made. Instead of skinny disc tires with a thin wire axle, Hot Wheels cars had thick plastic mag tires with foil-stamped, red-lined edges. The radically designed Hot Wheels axles contained a “torsion-bar suspension,” which gave the cars built-in shock absorbency and wheel bounce. The chassis was painted with hues of candy-colored “Spectraflame” paint, a translucent paint that allowed the shine of the polished metal chassis to show through. Some of the cars had black-coated roofs, to simulate the look of vinyl convertible tops. Hot Wheels cars were sold in blister packs, allowing potential purchasers to see the cool car inside. In addition to the cars, kids could purchase Hot Wheels tracks—long strips of orange track with attachable high-banked curves, ramps and gravity-defying loops—and add everything from lap counters to “superchargers” to create their own bedroom-based Laguna Seca or miniaturized Daytona International Speedway. The original 16 cars that made up the 1968 line were all designed for speed and attitude. There were no station wagons or dump trucks in that first season. The die-cast line included customized Ford Mustangs, Pontiac Firebirds, Plymouth Barracudas and Cadillac Eldorados. Also included in the line were the Beatnik Bandit, designed by Ed “Big Daddy” Roth (famous for designing the Rat Fink cartoon character), the Deora (a surf-truck Harry Bradley previously produced for Dodge), and the Silhouette (a bubble-domed hot rod inspired by a real-life Bill Cushenberry concept car).

The collector

Bruce Pascal is a commercial real estate agent and Hot Wheels collector, with more than 3,000 cars in his collection, including 1,000 “redline” cars manufactured before 1973. “I started collecting Hot Wheels the day they came out in 1968, but in those days I was like most other kids, and I played with them for many hours and essentially destroyed them. Ten years ago, I became a serious collector of Hot Wheels cars—no longer destroying them for sure!” One of those 3,000 cars in Pascal’s personal collection is a prototype Volkswagen Beach Bomb bus with two tiny removable surfboards mounted through the bus’s back windows. The vehicle’s skinny body was incompatible with Hot Wheels’ “Supercharger” accessory, a device that could launch the cars along flat, non-inclined track. Because of this design anomaly, the surfboards were relocated from the back windows to the side panels. At the same time, Mattel made the decision to release its Beach Bomb in other colors, scrapping its original choice of pink. This move laid the groundwork for a future world-record price. When a pink Beach Bomb prototype—one of only two slightly differing models known to exist in that color—went up for sale in November 1999, Bruce Pascal made a deal-clinching offer of $72,000—the largest price ever paid for a Hot Wheels car. The seller, Kansas Hot Wheels collector Chris Marshall, reportedly used the profits to purchase a full-size Dodge Viper. “It seems everyone likes Volkswagen cars in miniature, and the bus has assumed a Holy Grail status,” said Pascal. “My pink Beach Bomb has the skinny top and a remodeled bottom; only two are known to be like that. The company remodeled the Hot Wheel and made it thicker, and put surfboards on the side instead of the back window. Less than 40 of the skinny models are known, and all of those models in decent condition sell for $15,000 and up. I was very happy to get what I consider the crown jewel of the hobby—a car that is not only rare but also ‘pretty in pink.’ It was displayed at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles, quite an accomplishment for a toy car! I have never raced it—let’s just say it is ‘retired’ from the orange race track.”

The designer

For Amaury Diaz Serrano, a General Motors designer whose most successful project, the Cadillac 16 concept car, was featured on the covers of more than 25 magazines, the opportunity to create a General Motors-themed Hot Wheels car was a dream come true. His creation, a car blending the imagery of a 1957 Corvette SS with a World War II fighter-bomber, became the Chevroletor, the winning Hot Wheels General Motors Designer’s Challenge finalist. “The most important thing for me in creating the Chevroletor was to make the design immediately recognizable as a Chevrolet to the average person,” he said. “The front grille was borrowed from the ’57 Corvette; the horizontal bar in the front grille, though, is from a Chevrolet pickup truck. The side curve graphic is a classic ’57 line, while the two head rests on top of the car emulate WWII fighter bombs to add a unique touch. The Chevroletor exemplifies everything that a Hot Wheels car stands for – speed, power, performance and attitude.” Not only was Amaury Diaz Serrano able to create a winning entry in his chosen field, he also was able to reconnect with his childhood hobby of collecting Hot Wheels cars, many of which are displayed in a special room that he nicknamed the “Man Cave.” “When I started my first job in 1984, a fellow clay modeler took me to the Toledo Toy Show in Ohio. At that time, I didn’t know anything about toy collecting at all. I was walking around and looking at all the same toys I used to play with when I was a little kid. All of a sudden, it’s Christmas of 1968 all over again. I couldn’t help it. I immediately purchased some of the Hot Wheels I used to play with when I was eight years old. At that time, they were selling for $5-$10 in their original packages. I bought them out of nostalgia and for sentimental value, nothing else. For a period of three to five years, I collected the first five years of all the Redlines, accessories and racetracks – everything Hot Wheels. In all, I probably spent less than $3,000. Then when eBay came along, that $3,000 investment skyrocketed. That $10 Hot Wheels in its original package is now worth $300-$500! After so many years of playing with and collecting Hot Wheels, to see my Chevroletor in 1:64 scale was probably one of the most exciting moments in my entire 27 years as an industrial designer. For me, it’s as close as I can get to winning an Oscar. It validates you as an industrial designer to have your own Hot Wheels car.” Hot Wheels cars and tracks instantly dominated the toy diecast market in the 1960s and 1970s, selling 10 times the number of cars they originally projected in the first year of the product line. Suddenly, other diecast companies were left in Hot Wheels’ dust, and were forced into the role of catch-up. Matchbox retooled their cars from utilitarian trucks and buses to “Superfast” sports cars. Aurora sold its marginally successful “Speedline” die-cast car series for a couple of years. Another player, Johnny Lightning, produced a die-cast car set that almost caught up to Hot Wheels in sales—before the company that owned Johnny Lightning, Topper Toys, went bankrupt.

The challenge

As a kid, Jun Imai collected and played with Hot Wheels cars. Four years into his tenure as senior designer for the Hot Wheels line, the 32-year-old Imai, whose credits in the Hot Wheels line include the Rocketbox, Dieselboy and Dragtor cars, participated in the Hot Wheels Designer’s Challenge. After months of work, Imai’s Ford HW-40 concept car represented the Hot Wheels production brand as part of the Designer’s Challenge series. “My main focus of inspiration for the HW-40 was classic Hot Wheels cars, like the Twin Mill with its proportions, surfaces, power plant (big engine) and oversize wheels and tires,” said Imai. “The HW-40 had to look fast standing still; the entire design of the car flows from front to rear. Details like the exposed turbine engine, transparent hood and glass combination are signature Hot Wheels design features that we incorporate in many of our concepts. For the 1:64 scale Hot Wheels car, the wheels and tires need to be larger, and the proportions are cheated slightly to translate correctly in the smaller scale. For me, it was the best feeling to see all the hard work, inspiration and team effort to create the HW-40 vehicle in 1:5 scale down to 1:64 scale, and then watch it scream through the test track.” “The Hot Wheels Designer’s Challenge was created as a way for us to honor our automotive partners, and have them actively participate in our 40th anniversary, since they attributed to our success over the years” said Alec Tam, director of design for Hot Wheels and the lead director on the Designer’s Challenge project. “The Designer’s Challenge was the first time in Hot Wheels’ history that we went outside of our in-house design team to seek new car designs.” As a child, Tam saw firsthand how the cars went through the design stages from concept to completion. His father, Paul Tam, was a designer for Mattel in the 1960s and ‘70s; later, when Alec Tam became part of Mattel’s design team, he created a car inspired by one of his father’s popular design concepts. “My father touched many lines within Hot Wheels. The most memorable for me is the Whip Creamer, a wild, sleek turbine-powered concept car. I loved that design and even went so far as to do an updated version of it with the Whip Creamer II (released in 2004). As a kid, I remember playing with the completely transparent versions of the cars that were never available for sale. I found out later those were evaluation prototypes!” Today, Hot Wheels are more popular than ever. Four billion cars have rolled off the assembly lines since 1968—that’s an average of 1.6 Hot Wheels cars for every person on planet earth. The Internet includes hundreds of Hot Wheels Web sites where fans can share their Hot Wheels collecting stories and communicate with each other on where to find the rare and hot new cars. “Here in the UK and Europe,” said Andrew Reed, the diecast specialist for Vectis Auctions, “there has been a steady increase in the popularity and collectability of Hot Wheels, especially in the last two or three years as more have come onto the market. Although there are European collectors of Hot Wheels cars, at Vectis we still find that 70 percent of the Hot Wheels we auction are being bought by the U.S. market.” And even today, with the base cars still available in their blister packs for around a dollar a car, a good-sized collection can be assembled even on a frugal budget. And Hot Wheels cars still run on the cheapest fuel in the world—on gravity, down sections of orange plastic track.

Hot Wheels gets the ultimate aftermarket treatment: Bigtime bling from celebrity jeweler Jason of Beverly Hills

For Jason Arasheben, it was an intriguing and certainly unique challenge. To celebrate the release of the 4 billionth Hot Wheels car, Arasheben was commissioned by Mattel to create a special commemorative Hot Wheels car. Known professionally as “Jason of Beverly Hills,” Arasheben is known for his statement-making diamond jewelry that has adorned the earlobes, fingers and throats of young Hollywood’s leading ladies and multi-platinum hip hop artists. The tall order from Mattel? Cover a Hot Wheels car with the most diamonds and precious stones ever assembled on the tiny 1:64-scale automotive platform. “Mattel had done some research on me and my store,” Arasheben told Toy Collector Magazine. “They came to me with this idea, and they entrusted me to come up with something fabulous, which is what I did. I was into Hot Wheels cars when I was a kid. I had a whole bunch of them.” Ultimately, the car was covered with more than 2,700 colored diamonds, gathered from all over the world. Blue diamonds coat the exterior of the car, while the interior is bejeweled with black diamonds. Sparkling white diamonds decorate the piping and trim. No minute detail was overlooked. Red rubies are set as the tail lights, while black diamonds and red enamel create the “redline” tires. Rather than being stored in a blister pack like its mainstream counterparts, this Hot Wheels car received a special storage box, its lid inset with 40 white diamonds to signify Hot Wheels’ 40 years of diecast dominance. “Mattel wanted to have something unique and really over the top, something that stood out,” said Arasheben. “There are 2,700 diamonds in that car. We had to scour the world for just the perfect diamonds, which were cut down as small as one-sixth of a millimeter. We covered every possible surface space of the car, from its exterior to the interior.’ “The most difficult part was locating diamonds that were small enough to fit into the cracks of the car, to show off the car’s detail. That took more time than anything.” Arasheben said the total weight of the car’s diamonds is 24 carats. Its value is between $140,000 and $150,000 – maybe more. Adding bling to the car took more than 4½ months, with Arasheben’s entire staff working intensively to complete the project in time for its unveiling at the International Toy Fair in New York City. On Feb. 15 the diamond-encrusted Hot Wheels toy was delivered to the Mattel showrooms in New York by armored truck. There, both Arasheben and pop star Nick Lachey were on hand to introduce the special commemorative car. The diamond-covered street rod will be auctioned at some point in the future to benefit the charity for whom Lachey is an official spokesman: Big Brothers and Big Sisters. Summarizing the project, Arasheben said, “I personally loved making this car. Because of the challenge for me, it was definitely a one of a kind opportunity. It was an incredible way for Mattel to come out with a bang to celebrate the 4-billionth Hot Wheels car.”

Hot Wheels trivia

1. In 1969, a Hot Wheels Saturday morning cartoon series aired on ABC. The show, featuring the adventures of the Wheeler family and their Hot Wheels Racing Club, was produced by Ken Snyder and Pantomime Pictures, and was one of ABC’s popular Saturday morning entries. When the FCC declared that the program was a 30-minute commercial for Hot Wheels die-cast cars, and ABC was forced to take the program off the air.

2. Another highly successful Hot Wheels line was the battery-operated Sizzlers cars. Fueled with a special battery connector that replicated a service station gasoline pump, Sizzlers ran on special wide black track and could run for several minutes on a single charge. The Sizzlers line was produced from 1970 to 1973, and was briefly resurrected in 1976 and 1978, with a return in Target stores in 2006.

3. The long strips of orange Hot Wheels track had a sinister alternative use. Some parents, displeased with stepping on Hot Wheels cars one time too many, were known to use the orange track as a spanking paddle.

4. In the comedy concert film Eddie Murphy: Raw, the comedian relates an anecdote about in his youth, using orange Hot Wheels track as a belt to hold up his pants.

5. In 1995, Mattel introduced the Treasure Hunt limited edition collectors’ series, featuring 12 diecast cars in limited annual print runs of 10,000 pieces. In 2007, the line was modified to create two levels of Treasure Hunt cars, the new line being a premium series with the return of Spectraflame paint and premium wheels.

6. From 1997 to 2000, Hot Wheels sponsored Kyle Petty’s Pontiac in the NASCAR Winston Cup series.

7. In 1990, the Ralston Food Company produced Hot Wheels breakfast cereal, which featured “mag wheels” made of frosted oats, cars made of tiny marshmallows, and a toy Hot Wheels car at the bottom of each package.

8. In 1973, Hot Wheels distributed a line of tiny Zowees cars as part of a promotion with Shell Oil. Fill up your tank and you could receive one of several different 1:96 scale street rods, with names like Covered Draggin (with a plastic covered wagon attachment) or Baby Buggy (with a baby bonnet for a hood).