Hot Wheels

Hot Wheels is an American media franchise and brand of scale model cars invented by Elliot Handler and introduced by his company Mattel on May 18, 1968. It was the primary competitor of Matchbox until Mattel bought Matchbox owner Tyco Toys in 1997.
Many automobile manufacturers have since licensed Hot Wheels to make scale models of their cars, allowing the use of original design blueprints and detailing. Although Hot Wheels were originally intended to be children's toys, they have become popular with adult collectors, for whom limited edition models are now made available.

History

Development

In the late 1960s, Elliot Handler, co-founder of Mattel, developed the concept for Hot Wheels as a toy line that would appeal to boys in the same way their Barbie had to girls. Handler was inspired to create a new line of toy cars after seeing his son Kenneth play with Matchbox cars. Unlike Matchbox, which focused on small-scale models of real production vehicles, Handler envisioned Hot Wheels as a line of exaggerated, customized "hot rod" cars, featuring big rear tires, superchargers, flame paint jobs, hood blowers, and outlandish proportions. He began producing the cars with assistance from fellow engineer Jack Ryan. The flame logo was designed by artist Rick Irons, who worked at Mattel at the time. Mattel first unveiled 16 Hot Wheels cars in the 1968 New York Toy Fair.

The Sweet 16

The first line of Hot Wheels cars, known as The Original Sweet 16 were manufactured in 1967. These were the first of the Red Line Series, named for the tires which had a red pin stripe on their sides.
There were sixteen castings released, eleven of them designed by Harry Bentley Bradley with assistance from Handler and Ryan. The first one produced was a dark blue "Custom Camaro". Bradley was from the car industry and had designed the body for the Dodge Deora concept car and the Custom Fleet side,.
The lineup consisted of the following:

In addition to the cars themselves, Mattel produced a racing track set which was sold separately. Though it would be updated throughout the years, the original track set consists of a series of bright orange road sections, with one "superchargers". Hot Wheels' use of wide, hard-plastic tires created much less friction and tracked more smoothly than the narrow metal or plastic wheels used on contemporary Matchbox cars. Hot Wheels cars were designed to roll easily and at high speeds, which was a great innovation at the time.

1968–1977: The "Redline" era

1968

The Hot Wheels brand was successful, disrupting the industry for small die-cast car models from 1968 onward. They forced Matchbox and other competitors to rethink their concepts. Harry Bentley Bradley did not think that would be the case and had quit Mattel to go back to the car industry. When the company asked him to come back, he recommended a good friend, Ira Gilford. Gilford, who had just left Chrysler, quickly accepted the job of designing the next Hot Wheels models. Some of Hot Wheels' greatest cars, such as the Twin Mill and Splittin' Image, came from Ira Gilford's drawing board. The Twin Mill was introduced in 1969 and was used to create the company's first full-scale replica car in 2001.
The success of the 1968 line was solidified and consolidated with the 1969 releases, with which Hot Wheels effectively established itself as the hottest brand of small toy car models in the USA. Splittin' Image, Torero, Turbofire, and Twin Mill were part of the "Show & Go" series and are the very first original in-house designs by Hot Wheels.
The initial prototypes of the Beach Bomb were faithful to the shape of a real VW Type 2 "bus", and had two surfboards sticking out the back window, in a nod to the VW's perceived association with the surfing community and the slang term for a person who spends much time surfing—a "beach bum". During the fledgling Hot Wheels era, Mattel wanted to make sure that each of the cars could be used with any of the playsets and stunt track sets. Unfortunately, testing showed that this early version was too narrow to roll effectively on Hot Wheels track or be powered by the Super Charger, and was too top-heavy to negotiate high-speed corners.
Hot Wheels designers Howard Rees and Larry Wood modified the casting, extending the side fenders to accommodate the track width, as well as providing a new place on the vehicle to store each of the plastic surfboards. The roof was also cut away and replaced by a full-length sunroof, to lower the center of gravity. Nicknamed the Side-loader by collectors, this was the production version of the Beach Bomb.
The Rear-Loader Beach Bomb is widely considered the "Holy Grail", or ultimate pinnacle, of a serious Hot Wheels collection. An unknown number were made as test subjects and given to employees. A regular production Beach Bomb may be worth up to $600, depending on condition. Market prices on RLBBs however, have easily reached the five-figure plateau, ranging from $70,000 to $120,000. The Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles had a pink RLBB in its Hot Wheels exhibit, displayed alone on a rotating platform under glass. The Hot Wheels Collectors Club released a new, updated version of the Rear Loading Beach Bomb in 2002 as a limited edition.

1970s

1970 was a successful year for Hot Wheels, so Mattel came up with a new advertising slogan for the cars: "Go With the Winner". 43 new cars appeared that year, including the Sizzlers and Heavyweights lines. Howard Rees, who worked with Ira Gilford, was tired of designing cars. He wanted to work on the Major Matt Mason action figure toy line-up. Rees had a good friend by the name of Larry Wood, whom he worked with at Ford designing cars. When Wood found out about Hot Wheels at a party Rees was holding, Rees offered him the job of designing Hot Wheels models. Wood accepted, and, by the end of the week, Wood was working at Mattel, where his first design was the Tri-Baby. Larry Wood retired in 2019 after over 40 years of designing cars.
Another designer, Paul Tam, joined Wood and Gilford. Tam's first design was the Whip Creamer. Tam continued to work for Mattel until 1973. Among the many fantastic designs Tam thought up for Hot Wheels, some of the collector's favorites include Evil Weevil, Open Fire, Six Shooter, and the rare Double Header.
The year 1970 introduced "the Snake and the Mongoose", a manufactured 'rivalry' between two professional drag racers calling themselves "the Snake" and "the Mongoose" for the purposes of publicity. This was notably drag racing's first major non-automotive corporate sponsor, and the beginning of the NHRA's booming popularity with large-budget teams and championships. 1970 also introduced the first 'Silver Series', which contained three silver-painted models: the Boss Hoss, the Heavy Chevy, and the King 'Kuda, which were only obtainable through a mail-in offer that included a membership to the Hot Wheels Club. These three cars featured "supercharged" engines without hoods, and open exhaust headers, after the style of drag racing cars of the era. Popular among children, these 'Silver Cars' were considered faster than the rest of the Hot Wheels lineup, because they were supposedly heavier than the other gravity models, but the accuracy of this claim has never been tested under scientific conditions.
However, 1972 and 1973 were slow years. Only seven new models were made in 1972. Of the 24 models appearing for 1973, only three were new models. Also the cars changed from Mattel's in-house Spectraflame colors to mostly drab, solid enamel colors, which mainstream Hot Wheels cars still use today. Due to low sales, and the fact that the majority of the castings were not re-used in later years, the 1972-3 models are known to be very collectible.
In 1974, Hot Wheels introduced its Flying Colors line, and added flashy decals and "tampo-printed" paint designs which helped revitalize sales. As with the lower-friction wheels in 1968, this innovation was revolutionary in the industry, and—although far less effective in terms of sales impact than in 1968—was copied by the competition, who did not want to be outmaneuvered again by Mattel product strategists.
In 1977, the 'Redline Wheel' was phased out, with the red lines no longer being printed on the wheels. This cut costs, but also reflected that the prototypical "red line tires" popular on high-speed-rated automotive tires during the era of muscle cars and Polyglas tires were no longer popular. During this period, there was a trend away from wild hot rods and fantastic cars, and a move to more realistic cars and trucks, like the competitor Matchbox.

1977–1988: The 'Blackwalls' era

In 1981, Hot Ones wheels were introduced, which had gold-painted hubs, and claimed to have thinner axles for greater speed, along with additional suspension compliance that older production Hot Wheels lacked. Ultra Hot Wheels were introduced in 1984, and looked something like the cast alloy wheels found on a 1980s-era high-trim Renault Fuego or a Mazda 626, with three parallel dark lines cutting diagonally across the flat chrome face of the wheel, all three broken in the center to form six individual shorter lines. These new "Ultra Hots" claimed further speed improvements. Hot Wheels started offering models based on 1980s-era sports and economy cars, like the Pontiac Fiero or Dodge Omni 024, in addition to their typical 'hot rod' and muscle car style offerings. In 1983, a new style of wheel called Real Riders was introduced, which featured real rubber tires. Despite the fact that they were very popular, the Real Riders line was short-lived, because of high production costs. In the late 1980s, the so-called Blue Card blister pack color scheme was introduced, which would become the basis of Hot Wheels colors still used today.
Two other innovations were introduced briefly in Hot Wheels cars in the 1980s – Thermal Color Change paint, and rotating 'crash panel' vehicles. The former was able to change color on exposure to hot or cold water, and there was an initial release of 20 different cars, available as sets of three vehicles. The latter were vehicles with a panel that, on contact, would rotate to reveal a reverse side that appeared to be heavily dented. Variations in crash panels included front, rear and side panels, the last of whose mechanism has proven to be the most durable.
In the 1980s, Hot Wheels had gotten into a controversy with General Motors' Chevrolet Motors Division. In 1982, the Chevrolet Corvette had ended the curvaceous "Mako Shark" body style that had been in production for almost 15 years, and GM announced that the Corvette would be redesigned. In 1983, Chevrolet started to produce the all-new C4 Corvette but had assembly line problems which pushed production back 6 months causing GM's Marketing Department to label all 1983s as 1984s once they got production perfected so it would seem to the public that the all-new C4 Corvette came out early rather than late. But Hot Wheels saw what the new model of Corvette was going to look like before GM's official unveiling, and they designed a die-cast version of the 1984 Corvette. GM was angered and almost pulled its licensing with Mattel, but this controversy helped Corvette enthusiasts see what the new Corvette was going to look like. The 1984 Corvette production ran for 1.5 model years covering half of the remaining 1983 model year and ending on time for the 1985 model year.
In conjunction with Epyx Software, Mattel released a computer game edition of Hot Wheels for various 8-bit platforms in 1985, as part of the Computer Activity Toys series.