Brief history of Hot Wheels

These popular little toy cars have been around since my childhood and even though I am a girl, my sister and I loved to play with them. When we were being naughty, we got a slap with a piece of Hot Wheel track and that, my friend, would straighten you up quickly!

In the 1960s, one of the cofounders of Mattel, Elliot Handler, decided to produce a little toy car to compete with the Matchbox cars that had become wildly popular and were produced in England. Their recent new toy, “Barbie,” was a hit with the girls, so they were looking for a hit toy for boys. Mr. Handler didn’t want the same kind of die cast car that looked like current cars of the time, but cars that looked like the customized muscle cars he saw on the streets of California.

An engineer that worked for Chevrolet and owned several custom cars himself led a team of designers to produce muscle cars with thick redlined tires that actually had axles with suspensions. The first set of 16 is one of the most desired toy sets of die cast cars ever made. There were Camaros, Corvettes, Firebirds and others. The first year these were made was 1968 and the paint jobs were pretty amazing.

Of course, these cars needed a track to run on, thus the plastic orange weapon! You would put the tracks together and race each other or have the cars race through a loop and defy gravity. Mattel produced 16 million of these the first year and the little die cast cars have retained their popularity ever since. My boys enjoyed playing with them when they were little. Mattel says that they sell eight cars per second.

Although these cars were made for children, they have become highly collectible for adults. When we were little we didn’t keep our original packaging, they were toys to be played with! Not so these days.

Unfortunately, the quality of these cars are not the same as the original are made overseas but that has not diminished the fun they bring to children everywhere and the popularity of these little vehicles drove them straight into the National Toy Hall of Fame in 2011. Happy collecting!

HHJ News