Sick days always had a bright spot when I was a little girl. I’d sneak into my brothers’ room and set up their Hot Wheels tracks and race their cars. I’d crash ’em and smash ’em and practice jumping them higher and further so I could challenge my brothers after school and hopefully, win.
I loved building a figure 8 track, engineering hills using blocks under the tracks, meandering a course around the room without anyone objecting to my choices or “improving” on them. I loved picking out my favorite cars for the colors and lines as much as how fast and certain they would perform. I loved building my own little race-car world, seeing the cars speed around the curves and over impossible jumps I’d built.
I never thought of myself as a car girl, or a car enthusiast. I just liked to play.
This story is 100% human-researched and written based on actual first-person knowledge, extensive experience, and expertise on the subject of cars and trucks. Additionally, I was Hot Wheels guest for this tour but all opinions are my own.
Play Is Our Brain’s Favorite Way of Learning
The folks at Mattel like to play too, and they make no excuses for taking play seriously. That was probably the first thing I found to be refreshing as I toured the company’s design center in El Segundo, CA recently. I mean, yes, the place is filled with toys. There are bright colors and fun distractions literally everywhere: Hot Wheels, Matchbox cars, Barbie everything, Polly Pockets (sniff, sniff—my kids owned SO MANY of those), Fisher-Price toddler toys, American Girl dolls (yes, we had a lot of those, too).
A day of meandering through a toy workshop was almost like a day of play itself, and we need that; these days, play is even more important.
It’s how we relax our brain and our psyches, it’s how what we’ve learned and what we are thinking about percolates into formed thoughts. It lets us process, assess, contextualize. It leads to problem-solving, better communication, better understanding. It lets us take a break from reality.
As adults its easy to forget this, but as a kid, it’s all we want to do. The value of play sits front and center as a reason d’être in the Mattel Design Center’s lobby, properly credited to author Diane Ackerman.
Watch: The Newest Hot Wheels Model is Revealed!
Playing With Cars Is a Great Way To Play With Your Kids
When I became a mom I fell down on the job. I forgot all about how much I liked to play with cars when I was a kid. I suppose since Hot Wheels were “boy toys” and I had daughters, I gravitated more toward Polly Pockets and American Girl and less toward cars. It’s a natural mistake, but one I hope others won’t make. I wish I’d bought tracks and cars and even a T-Rex that eats and poops cars (yes, it’s a thing if you didn’t know—I didn’t until I saw it).
And then I got to know some boy moms and I saw a different view: as a girl whose always done girl things, learning to play with a boy, to teach and entertain him, can be a challenge. You have to really think outside your own comfort zone and find toys that entertain both you and him. That’s when toys like Hot Wheels not only come in handy, but make you grateful that you can delight your little man with something that pushes him to be creative, curious and crafty.
Read: Hot Wheels Legends Tour: Little Cars, Big Dreams
The Founder of Hot Wheels Was the Husband of the Founder of Barbie?!?
Where does the love of toys and play come from at Mattel? This might be the craziest part of the story: it’s all in the family. We all know of Ruth Handler, the inventor of the Barbie doll and the whole line of Barbie toys, including Ken, who was … named for her son. Ruth’s husband Elliot was a designer who studied at the ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, CA. On his way to doing something else he played with design for a had a miniature piano and a music box, and they were a hit. Soon he was in the toy biz with a partner named Matt (the Matt in Mattel; Elliot was the “el”) Soon Mattel was designing, building and selling some of the most popular toys.
Read: If The Witcher’s Characters Drove Cars, What Would They Pick? Here Are Our Votes
Elliot Realized Boys Need Toys, Too
Realizing that there was a lack of toys that appealed to boys as much as Barbie appealed to girls, Elliot decided to create a line of toy cars. He wanted the line of cars to reflect the car culture of Southern California, a culture that prizes creativity and style as much as performance and engineering. As a designer he wanted the cars to feel authentic so he hired car designers to work on the project. Mattel still hires former car designers including Bryan Benedict, Hot Wheels and Matchbox head of design, who designed cars for Honda, Mazda, Mercedes-Benz and others before he went to work for Mattel.
And if you think that the Hot Wheels name is simply clever, it’s better that that. It was Elliot’s excited exclamation when he saw the first prototype: “Those are some hot wheels!”
Read: From the Mouths of Babes: 6 Things My Nephew and Niece Love About NASCAR… and Now I Do, Too
Pulling Back the Curtain on the Hot Wheels Magic
The people who work at Mattel may have the coolest jobs in the world, designing and crafting toys. But within the Mattel world, Hot Wheels designers have an even more special place: they get to play with the world’s best cars, too, though at a miniature scale. But they get to think deeply about details, about moving parts, about how to make each project the delight of the kids and collectors who will scoop them up.
Our tour took us through the Hot Wheels process, from design and prototyping, 3D printing, a very cool process that allows you to see your idea quickly come to life, to packaging (yes, that was very, very cool, and yes, that part surprised me, too) and marketing.
Hot Wheels Wants to Be Your Playmate—and This Is How They Do It
As clever as Hot Wheels designs are, the way the company takes its products to market is just as clever: they strive to get inside the mind of the buyer like a playmate.
They don’t just build and sell cars; they build cars and often package them with artist-drawn renderings of the cars. They create different scale models and varying levels of details, from miniature cars to Brick Shop build-it-yourself Lego-like kits, so if you want to see all the moving parts and change out the wheels, you can. The basic cars sell for $1.25 so every parent everywhere can say yes to a Hot Wheels purchase.
And then, there’s the treasure hunt.
I really love this part: mixed in with the shipments of regular cars are “TH” logoed cars that feature premium paint, rubber tires, a gold flame on the Hot Wheels logo and a certification stamp on the car’s underside that designates it’s a Treasure Hunt edition; if you find one, buy it; it’s worth about 10 times its purchase price.
But Wait, There’s More!
There’s also a Super Treasure Hunt for super fans, and this is something I can’t stop thinking about. Anyone can become a member of the Red Line Club and watch for the Super Treasure Hunt product drop. If you’re one of the lucky few thousand to get one, you’ll get a specially designed collectors case filled with 15 Treasure Hunt models.
Joining the Red Line Club is not expensive ($10) and it gives you other privileges including product exclusives, early access to sales and members-only forums. Similarly, the Super Treasure Hunt collection isn’t all that pricey either at $250. But there’s only one collection a year and it’s not easy to snag one, so good luck.
Car and Creators Come to Life at the Hot Wheels Legends Tour
Probably the biggest fan event of the year, though, is the Hot Wheels Legends Tour. Each year the tour comes to about 40 cities around the world, inviting car modifiers and creators to show off their custom wheels. Judges curated by Hot Wheels tour the entries and pick a winner. At the end of the season the designers at Hot Wheels assess all the winners and pick on grand winner whose car will be built and sold as a Hot Wheels collection car.
As our tour ended, entrants in the Hot Wheels Legends Tour began to fill the parking lot at the Mattel Design Center, engines roaring, emotions high, grown men laughing giddily like little kids. Which is what’s so magical, that a toy company can rescue anyone from the real world for a bit and make them feel like a kid again.
