Hot Wheels: Ten of the weirdest and most wonderful

Recently we dived into the world of Hot Wheels, exploring the creative process and the decisions behind the development of the world's most iconic and obsessively collected 'toy cars' – and the people behind them.

Now, we're looking at 10 absolute favourites from the past 54 years of Hot Wheels.

1968 Custom Camaro

Like all good stories, we ought to start at the beginning.

This is the very first Hot Wheels toy brought to market, the blue Custom Camaro which brought the idea of toy magnate Elliot Handler to fruition. His wife invented Barbie, just for good measure…

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1969 Beach Bomb

The most valuable Hot Wheels toy of them all.

Riding the wave of Sixties surf culture – almost literally – this pink VW bus came with a rear-loading ‘board. Sadly that made it too top-heavy to ride Mattel’s famous orange tracks, so a swift redesign was needed. Those original prototypes survive, but you’ll need $250,000 to get your hands on one.

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2021 IWC Mercedes 300SL

This is the most premium Hot Wheels toy yet released, and the price tag might just make you cry.

If ‘toy’ even feels appropriate word for this vastly detailed recreation of a 1955 Gullwing which came complete with a matching IWC chronograph to help justify a near $17,000 price tag. Just 50 were made, and wo betide any kids who roll one across the kitchen floor.

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1990 Corvette collection

A special bullion-shaped pack celebrates one billion Hot Wheels toys.

Four different eras of Corvette were painted gold and presented in Mattel’s famous blister pack, albeit an extended version to accommodate the trophy the car sat atop. This collection marked the production of the billionth Hot Wheels toy – a number that’s rolled past 8bn in the three decades since.

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2022 Texas Toot

In 2022, a tiny Japanese truck was fed a diet of mutagen to become the Texas Toot.

The annual Hot Wheels Legends Tour aims to make a charmingly nerdy dream come true for a lucky handful – seeing their own car recreated in 1:64 scale and sold to the public. This year’s winner couldn’t be more deserving, Texas Toot being a monster truck based upon an Autozam Scrum kei pick-up truck. Cute as hell, whether we’re talking the toy or the real thing.

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2008 diamond-encrusted car

Hot Wheels celebrated both its 40th birthday and the production of its four billionth car in truly dazzling fashion.

A famed Beverly Hills jeweller got his hands on a HW muscle car and pimped it up with more than 2,700 (and 23 karats) of diamonds, lifting its value from $2 to almost $200,000. Still no Beach Bomb, though…

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We're not sure why Nick Lachey is in this photo, but we're also not going to put any time into googling it...

2012 Mad Manga

Enthusiasts of the real-world movement know these cars by their local name, bōsōzoku.

The company’s vast design team often get more excited about designing their own flights of fancy for the ‘HW Originals’ range than painstakingly replicating real-life cars.

One of our favourites is Mad Manga, an ode to Japanese bōsōzoku style that’s so dedicated to the cause, it’s low ride scuppers it on some of Hot Wheels’ own tracks.

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2022 Alfa Romeo 155 V6 Ti

Of course, the designers’ dedication to bringing real-life road and racecars to our living rooms also deserves praise.

This year’s addition of a thoroughly detailed Alfa 155 DTM car will be welcomed by kids and big kids alike. You can read how The Godfather of HW design brought it to life right here.

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2017 Street Wiener

Mattel’s commitment to bringing the weird and the wonderful to 1:64 scale is perhaps best personified by this, a motorised hot dog.

A faithful facsimile of the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile in the early ‘90s has since morphed into this drag-racing HW Original. And we’re all for it.

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2006 Bone Shaker

Surely the most iconic HW Original of them all, Bone Shaker saw designer Larry Wood fix a skull to the fascia of a hot rod to create a legend.

It’s spawned numerous spin-offs, appeared in the Forza Motorsport video game and come to life in full-size, fully driveable form atop a Corvette C5 chassis. It continues production, too, now with a supplementary NFT built in.

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