What Was Your Very First Car?
STORY | Michael Teo Van Runkle
Photography | Ryan Matthew Greger
News flash: Hot Wheels is the single best-selling toy on the planet. And that’s both in terms of units sold, as well as total revenue. Not bad for such a simple concept, a series of tiny toy cars that Mattel debuted back in 1968.
Yes, the same multi-billion-dollar valuation Mattel that Barbie and Barney and Bob The Builder and American Girl all call home—not to mention the semi-sarcastic target of last year’s Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling smash hit film. In the movie Barbie, Mattel co-founder Ruth Handler gives Robbie, as Barbie, a touching speech at the story’s denouement, explaining the original dream of toys serving as inspiration for women living out perfect lives in full existential realization of fleeting experience, parenthood, and eventual death.
Ruth and her husband Elliot Handler, along with fellow co-founder Harold Matson, founded Mattel and first released Barbie in 1959. Whether or not the end of the Barbie movie approaches hyperbole, Hot Wheels came about in ‘68 when Elliot began envisioning something slightly less conceptual: a simple toy car, but one that actually rolled well. He called in an aerospace engineer, who solved the problem of more boring toy cars that rolled in tight arcs — or not at all — by using Delrin plastics for the tiny wheel hubs that allowed for longer, smoother, straighter “drives.”
Mattel as a company, and Hot Wheels specifically, have come a long way since then. Hot Wheels notched $1 billion in sales by 1989, and today the business sells 17 cars per second in 150 nations worldwide. Throw in TV shows, video games, and a forthcoming theme park, plus a concerted effort lately to attract adults in a big way, and the plot widens further.
By now, most people on the planet might be able to say truthfully that their first car was a Hot Wheels. And Hot Wheels as a company only wants to foster — and capitalize on — that passion with higher quality toys, more engaging programming, and the Hot Wheels Legends Tour that bring real-life, if eminently fantastical, automobiles into the equation, too.
The process of developing and producing a Hot Wheels toy requires much of the same consideration and nearly as much time as major automakers put into production cars on the road. Of course, the timeframes and scope and regulations require slightly less in the way of real-world investment, yet the company actually attracts many designers and engineers away from “real” automakers.
Case in point, the key principal designer for both Hot Wheels and Mattel’s other signature toy car line, Matchbox, formerly worked on full-size cars at Honda, Mercedes-Benz, and Mitsubishi. Bryan Benedict now works at a dedicated Hot Wheels section of a massive dispersed facility that serves as both Mattel’s and Hot Wheels’ headquarters in El Segundo, California. Right here, former designer Harry Bradley penned the first 16 original Hot Wheels toys, which drew inspiration from SoCal hot rod and show car culture. Behind these concrete walls, a few Hot Wheels signs, and a security force worthy of a multi-billion-dollar empire, the stuff of rolling dreams becomes reality.
“Actually, Mattel called me out of the blue,” admits Benedict. “It’s funny because it was always in the back of my mind when I was in the car studios, all the guys in the studio would be like, ‘Oh man, Hot Wheels would be the ultimate car design job. Just do wild, crazy stuff.’ But it never actually occurred to me to apply. It was just like one of those kind of fantasy things…”
“I was a little hesitant at first,” he reveals. “Am I gonna miss the car industry? But I haven’t missed it for a second. I’m having so much fun here, the variety of projects we work on, all the cool collabs and everything, it’s a really fulfilling job creatively.”
Much like any full-sized car, every Hot Wheels starts out as a concept — whether based on an OEM partnership or a Legends Tour winner, or just a random zany idea that pops into a designer’s head one day. Of course, concepts today come to life in CAD modeling as much as hand sketching, but rest assured that the old-school appeal and artistry of pencil on paper still takes place in El Segundo. And in a way, at Hot Wheels, the design teams serve equally as sculptors and engineers.
The entire process of taking an initial concept to shelf-ready toy typically takes about 18 months. From the first sketch or CAD rendering, the design then evolves into what Benedict calls a “digital-solid model.” That’s not a euphemism, but rather a way of producing a single piece that brings the style and looks into physical form. Next, after any revisions, the “turnover package” delineates all the specs, materials, parts, exploded views, and textures for a Hot Wheels that begins to approach something nearer to its final production form.
From here, the development engineering team in Malaysia — where Hot Wheels’ factory produces final toys — creates a digital tooling model that goes through two or three rounds of revisions before being finalized. An engineering prototype produced in Malaysia using steel and other true materials, but without color, allows for inspection of gaps and spacing (and of course, how well the car rolls) before the creation of a final engineering prototype in full color.
The last step for every Hot Wheels car involves parts and packaging, or how the boxed-up toy looks for sale on a shelf or hanging from a hook at a store. Despite the many steps, modern technology means that Benedict and his team can work much quicker than any production car, truck, or SUV from any “real” automaker. And even if the process isn’t quite simple, Benedict believes that’s one of the major perks of the job.
“In the car industry, it was a lot of working on a little bit here, a little bit there, and you don’t necessarily get to see that vision through,” he explains. “And then you see it, five years later, and it looks different than you were expecting because someone changed it along the way… You know, I get to see a project through from start to finish, and every stage of the process is fun and exciting.”
One of the more impressive rooms at the Hot Wheels facility in El Segundo supports the design team with rapid 3D printing of prototypes. Multiple booths and printers allow designers to crank out three to 10 iterations per toy, typically overnight or over a weekend. Depending on the stage in the process, the printers can iterate in full color, or a solid single print, as well as solid rubber, and even full stainless steel using a finely ground powder and essentially a multi-step process of laser welding. The 3D-printed versions typically build up in a gel-based substrate that holds materials together, while a printer adds five-thousandths of an inch of material per layer, allowing up to eight layers at a time in a dot matrix including building articulated joints. The back-and forth from California to Malaysia shrinks these days thanks to the use of this new tech.
“We were already doing 3D printing when I started here 20 years ago,” Benedict says, before laughing. “That makes me old, but it was very new back then. The technology has advanced and it’s gotten so much quicker now and so much more precise. I mean, I can get files from my development engineer in Asia in the evening and print that out, have it ready for me first thing in the morning, review it, and send comments off right away, same day. It’s incredible how much it’s streamlined the process.”
Bringing toys from concept to reality in such a short window makes for plenty of playtime at El Segundo, too. And nowhere reveals the fun factor more than the toy and accessory development room — which purposefully resembles a messy children’s playroom dotted with racetracks, transport trucks, entire city blocks themed as police and fire stations, even gigantic plastic dinosaurs that eat cars up and can launch them into the air.
The toys and accessories do present a serious challenge, moreso than just coming up with creative and engaging imaginings. Critically, every new rollercoaster or loop or jump needs to work with every Hot Wheels — past, present, and future — which can weigh anywhere between 25 and 35 grams, with entirely different sizes and profiles and wheel designs. Problem solving, then, and pushing the boundaries where tiny cars transform from rolling toys to captivating vehicles that easily enchant childlike fascination.
Yet Hot Wheels also very clearly hopes to continue expanding the model lineup from children’s toys to more collectible versions that will attract adult buyers, too. The cars themselves now slot into something of a gradewalk, from the basic 1:64 scale diecasts to Treasure Hunter and Super Treasure Hunter models that feature better tires, rarer colors, and more detail.
Higher quality in the Elite 1:64 builds show more true-to-scale forms and designs, without quite as much cartoonification. And then 1:43 Collector cars take the concept to another size, as well. Rather than focusing on fabulous spaceship racecars, these models tend to highlight eras of motorsport or homologation specials, including JDM culture in the form of Nissan Skyline or a Mitsubishi Pajero Evolution, plus custom minitrucks with articulating beds or a Lancia Stratos.
Another recent project involved creating so-called “fidget cars” for children with low dexterity or autism spectrum disorders: These cars spin like popular fidget spinners, but are also designed to roll no matter how a child puts them down. The designs surpass the typical development process, critically relying on science to help finetune the perfect toy.
“We’re not just shooting in the dark,” says Benedict. “We do a lot of research, at what we call the Imagination Center, where we bring kids in to play with stuff and see how they interact with it and get an understanding of that. I actually happen to have a lot of personal experience with kids with autism because I have nieces and nephews that are on the spectrum. And so, on top of the research we do here, I’ve done a lot of personal research with family members.”
Then there’s the Red Line Club, for members only, that includes limited-edition drops and the opportunity to purchase year-end collections that can number in the hundreds of cars. Hot Wheels also jumps on critical cultural moments, from Darth Vader and X-Wing starship cars to celebrate the Star Wars franchise, or to 2013, when a Camaro became the first Hot Wheels to be sold in a real car dealership in partnership with General Motors. A forthcoming partnership with Formula 1 in the Drive to Survive era also fits into the plan.
The video games and YouTube series aim to continue building the culture surrounding Hot Wheels, while linking fans of the original diecasts with the advancements in accessory concepts, as well as the newfangled collectibles. The Hot Wheels Legends Tour, meanwhile, provides an internal contest for car builders to bring their own creative visions for a Hot Wheels car to life in full-size form. One lucky — and skilled — winner gets their unique creation immortalized as the next official Hot Wheels car.
“The Legends Tour itself is more geared towards the adult collectors and auto enthusiasts,” explains Benedict. “And so you’ll see a lot of these adult fans coming with their small children, and their children go crazy.
“As long as I’ve been here, we’re really always trying to balance that line between appealing to children, which is our core target audience, and the adult collectors. And it’s especially a unique challenge with the basic car line ‘cause that very much has to be appealed to children. But at the same time, we know there’s a very large percentage of that buyer that is an adult collector, as well.”
Clearly, by tapping into the imaginations of children and adults alike, Hot Wheels has evolved into a global phenomenon of far greater significance than a simple toy car that rolled a little further than the competition in 1968. Truly part and parcel of car culture, here in the United States and abroad, Hot Wheels fosters the simple joys of these rolling machines — from the smallest diecasts to full-size running automobiles, and everything in between — onto which we project our wildest imagination.
“The adult collectors and their enthusiasm is really rewarding,” Benedict says. “But for me, there’s nothing better than being in a toy store and seeing a little kid jump up and down and tell their mom or dad, ‘I want that! I want that!’”
