For as long as I can remember, I’ve played with and collected Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars. As a kid, I regularly wore out Matchbox City play sets; just thinking about them brings back the unmistakable scent of the vinyl used in their construction.  With flattened cardboard boxes and markers, I expanded those play sets with hand-drawn suburbs, freeways, and parking lots, playing alone in my room for hours at a time, coordinating traffic for a fictional society. Occasionally, a scofflaw in a Camaro, Challenger, Firebird, or Mustang would prove disruptive, starting a police chase through Matchbox City. No wonder I watch, transfixed, when local news shows real high-speed chases on television or a website.  Once junior high school started, I stopped playing with my cars. I still bought them, of course, but I quit opening the packages, instead nesting them into shoeboxes that are currently stored in my garage.  When I had kids of my own, I got to play with Hot Wheels cars again, and it looks like I’ve still got a few more years of fun ahead of me. Then, I’ll take another break until one of my four daughters makes me a grandpa.  When they’re not dressing up like Elsa and Anna, or playing Minecraft on our iPad, my two youngest girls still play with Hot Wheels cars. Recently, we bought a parking garage for their cars, and they were thrilled with it. Naturally, then, when Mattel invited me to bring my kids out to the Hot Wheels Garage near the toymaker’s El Segundo, Calif., headquarters for a little fun right before Father’s Day, I jumped at the chance.  Hot Wheels also introduced its new 1:64 scale model of the Tesla S at this event, and presented an interactive exhibit of its Speedometry elementary school program, a Science Technology Engineering Math (STEM) curriculum that is free for elementary schools and is designed for 4th grade students.  Using Hot Wheels vehicles and tracks, Speedometry helps children to learn about speed, angles, slopes, kinetic energy, potential energy, and more. Co-created with researchers at the University of Southern California Rossier School of Education, and designed to Common Core State Standards and Next Generation Science Standards, the Hot Wheels Speedometry program is in a pilot phase in Los Angeles schools. A version for kindergarten students is currently in development.  Based on the amount of time my own kids, who are 4- and 6-years of age, had been playing with the Speedometry exhibit, it appears that the Mattel Children’s Foundation, Hot Wheels, and USC are on the right track.  A competitive duo, they also enjoyed the Hot Wheels Speedway, racing different version of Hot Wheels cars down a long ramp to electronically judged victory.  Speaking of tracks, a gleaming, silver, full-size Tesla Model P85S sat in a display designed to look like the classic orange strips of Hot Wheels racing track that I used to have as a kid.  I’ll be honest, though. This is Los Angeles. During the 33-mile drive from home to the Hot Wheels Garage, I saw at least 10 Teslas on the freeway.  More intriguing were the full-size editions of the Bone Shaker hot rod, the Deora II surf truck, and the Darth Car that Hot Wheels had on display. The Darth Car is a “character car” based on Darth Vader and built on a Corvette C5 platform. Apparently, it makes more than 525-horsepower and it’ll do 150 mph. My kids also had a blast playing inside of the VW Beach Bomb, a slammed and chopped Volkswagen Bus.  While the kids were having fun, I chatted with Chris Down, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Hot Wheels. No surprise, he’s a car guy, and he explained that when his team decides to add something new to the lineup, they seek to scale down aspirational vehicles, whether they’re real, conceptual, or conceived in a designer’s imagination.  About half of Hot Wheels models are original vehicles, and about half are licensed, such as the Tesla Model S. Down says that automakers are eager to work with Mattel, so when a car company has something new in development, and Hot Wheels wants to build a version of it, the teams collaborate in advance, such as when the redesigned 2015 Ford Mustang came out and Hot Wheels debuted its scale model at around the same time.  Speaking from the perspective of a Hot Wheels devotee and collector, if not for my little 1:64 models, I would never have a chance to own most of the cars I’ve always wanted.  Thank you, Hot Wheels. And Happy Father’s Day, fellow car-crazed dads and granddads.
The staple toy of any gearhead's childhood, Hot Wheels is alive and well and more advanced than ever before.