Meet Mike McKittrick! Mattel employee from 1968-1995 Posted on September 5, 2022 (September 5, 2022) Mike McKittrick talks about his long career at Mattel that started in the in May of 1968. It was his job straight out of High School and he found himself on the factory floor in Hawthorne, CA. Come hear stories about the earliest days of Hot Wheels and his career at Mattel that spanned all […]
This Hot Wheels collector has it all! (Almost…) Posted on August 2, 2022 (August 2, 2022) For Eric Elrod there is nothing cooler than Hot Wheels. You know, those miniature die-cast customized cars that Mattel began making for Generation X-ers back in 1968? The company has produced more than 6 billion of the 1:64 scale toy cars over the past 53 years. And you could be a lucky grownup if you […]
Meet Howard Rees: Mattel’s Marvelous Redline Designer! Posted on June 30, 2022 (June 30, 2022) Howard Rees: Mattel’s Marvelous Redline Designer! Howard Rees was born in 1941, and went to the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles, where he earned his Bachelor in Fine Arts Degree in 1964. Later he accepted a position with Ford Motor Company in England. After leaving England he continued to work with Ford […]
Bruce Kalapach’s … “AUTO” BIOGRAPHY Posted on February 3, 2022 “AUTO” BIOGRAPHY Hello……. My name is Bruce Kalapach. I am known as “Redliner” on most sites including ebay, sometimes “Iamredliner” and sometimes “Father Time”. I am about to turn 65, but I am still a kid and always will be. My childhood association with the VERY FIRST Hot Wheels shipment to the Chicago area […]
HOT WHEEL REDLINE HISTORY, THE CLASSIC CORD Posted on January 7, 2022 (January 7, 2022) ADAM GRAPES Auburn-Cords-Doozie HISTORIAN A second resin/acetate Classic Cord has also been found. This one features a fully painted body in white, a black roof and silver windshield/sidepipes/bumper details. The body details are slightly different than the raw version showing continued work on the final concept. There […]
How TV Was Nearly Changed Forever By…a Hot Wheels Cartoon? Posted on December 12, 2021 How a cartoon about Hot Wheels nearly changed TV forever in the late 1960s. TV URBAN LEGEND: A Hot Wheels cartoon got ABC in hot water with the FCC over it being viewed as simply a half hour advertisement for the toy cars. It’s sometimes hard to tell, exactly, whether TV changed the products that […]
1971 Hot Wheels Sizzlers Track Sets Posted on August 10, 2021 (August 10, 2021) 1971 Sizzlers tracks came as 2 orange tracks and 3 black Fat Tracks. Of the orange tracks one was for North America and one for the United Kingdom. North America got the Highwinder Set The U.K. got the Pursuit Set The big advance for 1971 was the advent of Fat Track. This […]
The world’s most expensive Hot Wheels gets its own NFT equivalent! Posted on July 13, 2021 (July 15, 2021) Following the lead of Mattel taking Hot Wheels to the NFT art world, Bruce Pascal has decided to give his most prized possession, the 1968 Pink VW Rear-Loader Beach Bomb, an NFT equivalent. Tony & Carmen Matthews, the team behind SuperFly Autos & Diecast Heroes, will be launching the Pink Beach Bomb NFT on behalf […]
1969 Hot Wheels “The Fast Cars Book”. Posted on June 8, 2021 For 1969, Mattel commissioned a photo book of Hot Wheels in action for kids. Front Cover of The Fast Cars Book. The book only cost 29 cents. That was significantly cheaper than the price of a single Hot Wheels car. The book was published by Golden Press of New York. Jo Anne Wood did the […]
Sweet Sixteen: The Original Hot Wheels Cars of 1968 Posted on April 10, 2021 (April 15, 2021) “Sweet Sixteen: The Original Hot Wheels Cars of 1968” Revisit the launch of Hot Wheels Redline cars, as collector Gary Nabors walks the viewer though each of the sixteen models. All the original cars were based upon real cars of the time – some were hot rod versions of cars being produced by the big […]