Saturday dawn for fry used to be sacred . We ’d sit on the floor , clutching a cereal bowl , our eyeballs mere inch from the television receiver silver screen , so near we could see the tiny pixels that made up the large range of a function . Every two instant , or so it seemed , He - Man or Jem or Sponge Bob had to take a break , and the outpouring of commercials would get . One of those commercials would almost always include a couple of kids also on the level , but instead of staring at the screen like littlezombies , they were zooming lustrous , tiny cars around on tracks . They were Hot Wheels , and they were far more affordable than the genuine thing . Like , kid - allowance affordable . As soon as our parents plunked a few dollars in our hands , we jammed those babies into the scoop of our jeans and head for the toy gangway , where the Hot Wheels hung on pegs . We looked at every house of cards package for the good car that we did n’t already have . And , because those things are never stock in an neat fashion , you had to bet at every . Single . One .
Hot Wheels were so cool because the designers came from the auto diligence , where they designed real , full - sized elevator car . But in tiny form , they could really lease their imaginations run wild . This also made Hot Wheels the telephone number - one vehicle holding in the United States every year since its beginnings in 1968 , according to parent company Mattel . The sales figure of these little car are way cock-a-hoop than the Big Three : Mattel has produced more than 4 billion Hot Wheels , in amount , since 1968 . That ’s more cars than Detroit ’s three largestauto manufacturerscombined .
The Saturday morning ritual may be gone , but cartoons , commercials , and Hot Wheels are still around , and kids are still paying for them with their few crinkled dollar bills . And adults are now paying for them with mellow - limit credit card . Let ’s look into the allure of some of the hottest wheels on the planet .
Little Cars Make a Big Splash
In the late sixties , Matchbox cars already exist , and they were sell like unhinged . Elliot Handler , co - founder of Mattel , meet that realistic toy dog car were make a mint for Matchbox , and he want a patch of that market . So he engage actual automotive interior decorator and fix about creating the first readiness of 16 Hot Wheels cars , which were also known as California Custom Miniatures . The very first cable car produced was a dark - blue ( or white , depend on your beginning ) Custom Camaro , and the first set included a preview of the 1969 Corvette before the car was even available in full sizing . Rumor has it that this was thanks to former Chevrolet employee Harry Bentley Bradley , who know that the room access to the GM cafeteria was often unlocked . He used his inside knowledge to get ahold of the fresh Corvette plans and produce a teeny - tiny rendering . ( He also design 10 other Hot Wheels in the 1968 collection . )
Hot Wheels are built at a 1:64 scale , which means if you make a regular car with a shrink - irradiation and made it 64 times smaller , you ’d have a Hot Wheels car . For the first few geezerhood , Hot Wheels were paint in Spectraflame , which was about as shiny and sparkly as paint could be , and they had chrome - like mag wheels , too . And , just like the cool real - life muscle gondola , Hot Wheels had redline tire , a feature they bear up until 1977 .
Even in the very first year , there was a track available for racing Hot Wheels , and the cars were made to reach 200 scale miles per hour ( 321.9 scale klick per hour ) . They had moving styrene wheels attached to the form by existent axles with a working suspension that included midget charge card bushings . Thissuspensionwas a real pain in the bumper to instal , though , so in 1970 it got an inspection and repair .
Hot Wheels Heat Up
Elliot Handler ’s religious belief in kids wanting cool piddling cars was not misplaced . The first set did so well that in 1969 , Hot Wheels publish 24 fresh cars , and in 1970 there were 33 entire cars . Each of these models , by the mode , come in a few different colors , so that 1970 Red Baron — a dragster with an incomprehensible and inexplicably cool helmet over the cockpit — could be discover in unlike coloring material .
The requirement for Hot Wheels overwhelmed the California output works within the first few month , and for the first couple of age , manufacturing was break up between in there and Hong Kong . In 1973 , Mattel moved all Hot Wheels output to Hong Kong , and the next year they sadly ended the expensive and backbreaking to apply Spectraflame pigment . A far less - glazed enamel was used ever after . Sad face .
But kids were n’t sad for long . In 1983 , Hot Wheels come in Happy Meal boxes atMcDonald ’s . This was pretty much the top of 80s kid - hood . Except that around the same prison term , Hot Wheels product move to Malaysia and they added saving cars to the card . Because why dream of a Camaro or something out - of - this - world like the " Eevil Weevil " when you could dream about aPontiac Fiero , just like all the modest - time drug dealers in your town ?
In 1995 , Hot Wheels debuted Treasure Hunt cars , which were limited to just 10,000 castings of 12 models ( each year ) with the TH logotype , include a Rolls - Royce Phantom II and an Olds 442 in the first year . The idea with a modified serial called Treasure Hunt , of course , is that they ’re difficult to find , and rewarding when you do . But the series engender really popular with gatherer , so while there are still only 12 models each year , they made the decisiveness to make more of them . Which makes them less rare . Which also makes them less payable , one would think .
The next year , the inevitable bump . Mattel bought their old rival Matchbox . All your bantam motorcar are belong to us .
Tiny Designers
Back in the Clarence Shepard Day Jr. , designers who want to produce a Hot Wheels car found on the real affair would have to get the measurement of the real car and then scale it down . Sometimes , like when Harry Bradley " obtain " the programme for the new Corvette , the measure were already provided for the designers . But sometimes it was a matter occupy a mag tape measure out to the parking fate and doing it the older - fashioned way .
In the digital years , however , no one measures anything in real sprightliness . Nor do they have to sneak in the unlocked cafeteria door . Since 2004 , auto manufacturer have just sentCAD filesof their cars to the Hot Wheels designer . Even with this technical advance , designers still have a hard job to do . It turns out that when you hit a genuine - aliveness machine with a shrink ray , it looks weird . The proportions get sort - of low-down . The short version is too skinny , and the wheels are in the wrong office . The designers start by adjusting the wheelbase to make the die - cast car expect right before adjusting everything else .
Only about half of the cars Hot Wheels puts out in a yr are replicas , though . The other half springtime to the full formed from the designers ' imagery . These are chalk out out either on newspaper or using computer software to begin with , and then they ’re transferred — like every other simulacrum inthe bonk creation — to Photoshop , where the design can be rig . Lately , because we live in the future , Hot Wheels designers have been capable to post their designs to a 3D printing machine for prototyping so they can see what it looks like at the veracious size and in the real world . Once the house decorator has create the car he imagined , he paw - terminate the body to make certain it ’s incisively correct .
At this point , the car is charge to the factory to make the die from which it will be vagabond . That ’s why they ’re call " dice - cast " cars . Basically , the paradigm is used to make a mold , or die , which is then fill up with liquified metallic element under mellow insistence . Once the dice is retch , it ’s also hand - finished to smoothen out any imperfection before the gondola goes into full production .
Collector Cars
Hot Wheels are also red-hot properties . How hot ? Well , according to Mattel , some collection of these little plaything car are appreciate at over $ 1 million . The infrangible hottest was a VW bus that trade for $ 72,000 in 2000 . There were several things conduce to what sounds like ( and maybe is ) an insane monetary value for a caravan you ca n’t even force back . First , the Beach Bomb , as the model was known , was Hot Pink — a colouring material that was link up with girl and therefore not pop with the boys who generally bought Hot Wheels in 1968 . Second , it was a Rear - Loader Beach Bomb . Its littlesurfboardsstuck out the rear window , which turned out to be difficult to produce at the factory . It did n’t exploit with the caterpillar tread anyway , so it was redesign with a blanket physical structure and the surfboard stretch in the side . And to top it all off , there are only 25 of these epitome Rear - Loader Beach Bombs known to exist . Ergo , this little guy sell for the price of a drivable Cadillac Escalade rather than the $ 600 a " regular " 1968 Beach Bomb by Hot Wheels would go for .
While there are other rarities that have fetched eminent prices , none are even close to that record . There was the " Cheetah " of 1968 . Its name was changed to the " Python " pretty quickly when Mattel found out GM White House Bill Thomas possess the Cheetah name ; it was his race car competition to Carroll Shelby ’s Cobra . If you may get your red-hot minuscule hands on a Python mannequin that still say " Cheetah " on the chassis , before it was alter , you may bring about $ 10,000 for it .
Collectors have been holding Hot Wheels conventions since the 1980s , and they ’ve got a few pointers for you , just in case your nostalgia gets the good of you and you want to line your bookshelves with cool cars :
If you really need to geek out , there are groups of Hot Wheels collectors all over the place.Hotwheelscollectors.comalone has more than a quartern - million user . Go beforehand — make it a quarter - million and one .
Lots More Information
When I was growing up , I had a cardboard case full of Hot Wheels . hundred of footling metal car . My brother had another box full . And I ’m previous enough now that if I had keep those cars , I would probably be a millionaire . Except that we all cognise that is n’t unfeigned .
We bet with those cars hard . Really hard . I remember one of our favorite games was to initiate at one destruction of our small kitchen with the cars lined up with their nose at a line in the linoleum . Then we would jostle them as hard as we could toward the other final stage of the kitchen . The car that hit the skirting board of the opposite paries with all four wheels still on the story win . That game was quickly kill when our parent noticed what pass - stray metal cars do to wood baseboards .
By the meter we grew out of them , our Hot Wheels looked as terrible as the skirting board in the kitchen . Collectors say to look for dent and paint scratches ; ours were made of nothing but dent and scratches . So , yeah . Maybe not a millionaire .
