It’s Swag Swensday! That’s when we kick down some sweet, sweet swag to Autopian Members, the cool-kids club for car people that you really should have joined already. What’s the holdup? You can get in on the fun with a Cloth Tier membership for a mere seven bucks a month (or break off $50 to cover the year, which works out to way less than five dollars a month). There’s even more fun with the Cloth, Velour, and Rich Corinthian Leather tiers. Become an Autopian Member today!
Here’s the thing: I have way too many Hot Wheels cars. It didn’t feel like a lot when I was buying them in ones or twos or threes based solely on “Oh, that’s a cool one,” but man, have they added up. During my recent Office Clutter Purge, I boxed up all the little die-casts, still on their cards, and it’s gotta be a good 50 pounds of metal and plastic – and a nice chunk of change for Mattel that I never even felt because it was just an extra $1.25 each time I went out for milk or Minute Rice or whatever.
I’m swimming in so many Hot Wheels and Matchbox over here that I can easily toss a few sets of ten randomly-selected cars to randomly-selected Autopian Members without flinching, and what you see below is the latest ten-car grab going out to a Member. Now let’s see what I pulled outta the Hot Wheels Box …
Alrighty, we’ve got the Toyota Land Cruiser complete with GReddy and Fifteen52 logos on the rocker panels; the Dodge Van with go-kart in the back, love that (and it’s a Ryu’s Ride, bonus); and a ’15 Mazda MX-5 Miata counterbalancing a somber grey paint job with an exuberant rear wing. Moving on!
Lots of deco and a heaping helping of off-road action with these three. I really like the Custom Ford Bronco casting and those big tires, though I do wish Mattel molded them in black instead of mud brown. Next, that Chrysler Pacifica in full overlanding mode is the perfect blend of rad, lol, and wtf; and the Volvo XC40 Recharge is ready for alpine excitement with a pair of snowboards on the roof. Gotta say, it really looks tough on those beadlocks!
Whoa, looks like I hit a vein of green in the die-cast car mine. Paging Matt Hardigree, we got a Ford Escort RS2000 up in here! – plus a Mighty K in metallic seafoam on gold wheels, and an ’85 Honda City Turbo II, another from the Ryu’s Rides line. You can’t see it here, but the City’s got a teeny-weeny Motocompo in the back!
… And one Matchbox makes ten! The 2016 Toyota Tacoma is a really nice casting, especially in that tri-color paint. The camping rig is removable, and the underside is full of detail, including frame rails, transmission and oil pan, and a rear axle with diff housing. Neat!
This gang of cars might land in your mailbox soon if you’re the lucky Member chosen by Jason’s random number generator program thingy. If you’re not a Member yet, you can join today and you’ll be on the potential swag-getter list for these cars and all the Swag Swensday gear dropping in the future. Become a Member now!
Oh, one note before I go: I’m not researching these cars at all, so if any of ’em are super rare or desirable or trading for big bucks on Ebay or something, don’t tell me! I don’t wanna know!
I like collecting the Fast Foodie Hotwheels.
Welp as a collector I was all OOOOOOHHH then- I have all of these lol
I love this. Will be checking my mailbox daily until the winner is revealed.
Gosh, my brother and I went through so many Hot Wheels cars in the late 60s. There was a concrete slide at a park near where we lived and it was curvy and kind of steep. We and our similarly addicted friends left a lot of Mattel paint flakes on or along the edges.
I also have an ever increasing horde of zinc based diecast vehicles of roughly 1/64 scale. I only just got a display shelf and all it does is display my recent purchases.
…so sure, I could use more. I don’t have a problem. Nosiree…
My toddler would go nuts over these. Am I entered?
Dude. Same! We have sooo many little cars but he remembers EVERY SINGLE ONE so it’s nearly impossible to pack them away.
Matchbox cars that are not in boxes. What has the world come to?
Based on my cursory research of googling it, the world came to this in the 1980s toy boom of marketing. They still occasionally release small batches of cars in boxes, but they’ve been carded for like 45 years now.
I had a lot of Matchbox cars when I was a kid, and they definitely in boxes, but I had probably lost interest in them by the time they went to cards in 1982. I was 15/16 then.
The World has Gone Wrong…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYobZAYZZiM
That is a choice selection!
My parents both grew up victims of the Great Depression. They couldn’t comprehend that things were different although they looked the same, i.e. polyester jeans from Montgomery Wards were the same as Levis 505 jeans. Thus, I grew up with Aurora Speedline cars, with cars and tracks that were completely incompatible with Hot Wheels products. Ostracization from society is a painful experience.
Yeah, I was stigmatized for wearing Monkey Wards too. Same deal with the parents. We didn’t have a color TV until 1966.
I can beat that. We didn’t have a color TV until 1973. Probably because they didn’t sell B&W 26″ TVs.
I think I was in middle school when my family went to the local tennis courts one summer day. I was sporting new sneakers from KMart. Well, it seems that the soles on those “basketball” shoes were more plastic than rubber, and I not only slid all over the damn court, I left white streaks everytime I did so.
My wise and observant mother noticed, and it was only true gum rubber sole shoes for me after that.
Hey, I know that LC80! Probably the last Hot Wheels I bought, ~5 years ago, because Land Cruisers are too dang cool!
Oh man, I was a kid when Hot Wheels first came out, and my mom had no problem buying them for me. I had the sweet 16, as well as custom carry cases. Then came tons of track (anything to occupy my time). Of course I was a kid and played with them all, never taking any care. Are they worth a lot now, oh yeah, but I wouldn’t trade that time for anything.
The perfect blend of rad, lol and wtf is exactly my style.
Which is probably why I own the Chrysler van. And also probably why I already own that Hot Wheels.
Came here to say the same, leaving satisfied.
Oh man! I used to have that Hot Wheels track in the lede image! While my HW collection has survived to this day, the track, unfortunately, did not.
I’ve recently switched from Funko Pops to HWs as the default gift for my family to buy me. My office desk has 20 FPs to only 4 new HWs (my childhood collection needs some serious restoration, 8 y.o. me did not go easy on those wee cars), so this would even up the score pretty quickly.
I had that set, too. Hours of fun setting up complicated tracks with the little booster “garages” to keep the cars moving. Eventually wore out the bearings in them!
I’m good. I have too much crap, but I do have a small set of Hot Wheels (OG) and track. And tongues, of course. They are for the grandchildren, which do not yet exist.
“And tongues, of course. They are for the grandchildren”
Um….
Terrible. Just terrible. Take your smile.
With all the wacky new cars they keep pumping out, its super easy to play Pokemon and gotta catch em all it seems.
Really looking forward to some of the releases coming out this year.
@Torch – I found at a store a Karmann Ghia type 34 matchbox! They made like, what, 27 of those in real life???
I have that one! It replaced the type 14 in my display collection b/c of the rarity.
Re the City with the Motocompo in the back, I always get a kick out of Mattel’s insistence on doing the little things right, even on the mainline cars.
I have cars from right hand drive countries that feature the correct seating position, racing models with visible roll cages inside, but my absolute favorite has to be when the car comes in a very specific color keyed to how we might know it in media, even if it’s a for-most deep cut.
Like my Matchbox Volvo P1800 is white b/c Simon Templar, and my Hot Wheels ’72 Gran Torino is Ivy Green Metallic b/c get the hell off my lawn!
On that note, have you seen the modified Pontiac Aztec casting? It’s available in the Walter White pale green, and has a little pork pie hat and a pair of sunglasses visible on the rear tray. Such a fun little easter egg. Even has a mismatched black rear wheel to represent his lack of hubcap.
You should give these away for comment of the day
What am I, rich? We’re talking $1.25 here!
What are you spending all those sweet, sweet member’s dues on, more Hot Wheels? That’s how you got in this mess in the first place!
The Circle Of Life
I will say that it would be great if I won, but I have enough as it is, as my entire desk shelf is devoted to just Hot Wheels or diecast in general, so I do hope someone else wins!
These would be super fun! That Pacifica is just the kind of goofy thing I enjoy, and that Matchbox Tacoma looks great. The only one I already have is the Mighty K, but two would make it easier for me to modify one without feeling weird about it.
My soon to be 7 year old son has recently become obsessed with hot wheels and he would lose his mind at the green cars there!
my dad had the same problem, he’s reduced purchases a lot in the last few years but only because he’s replaced it with Lego, lol
I love the mighty K! I haven’t seen it before.
I have the monster K-Truck hot wheels, but its just not as cool.
I have the same problem. I dig through the Hot Wheels bin every time I stop at Kroger to get snacks for my office. If something is cool, there goes my $1.25. I’m picky, though. Here’s the fleet on my desk:
If you ever find you have too many, I’m happy to come take a few off your hands
When they did a 1968 4-4-2 I grabbed like three of them.
Triples makes it safe. Triples is best.
My brain slipped a gear for a moment and was about to correct you to “you mean an 1868 4-4-2?” before I realized you meant Oldsmobile.
I have the Chevette. I found it fun! I saw a Chevette at Thompson CT Lemons with a rear mounted Subie 4. Awesome
FC for the win!
I just want to say the Kelvin-verse Enterprise is the ugliest version of the ship. The warp engines are to big, the dorsal fin sits to far back, the secondary hull tapers to soon, the swoopy pylons connecting the nacelles to the secondary hull look wrong, and they stole the saucer section almost wholesale from the Enterprise Refit from the original crew movie era. JJ Abrams effectively ruined Star Trek and Star Wars.
I hate him for that. Going all the way back to Lost, Abrams has a real talent for beginnings, but can’t write an ending to save his life.
I didn’t hate the JJ Enterprise. Frankly my only gripe with it is I think it was totally by accident that it ended up being larger than the Enterprise D thanks to the way the rendering things like the inside of the shuttle bay. Since the Enterprise kept getting a little bigger from B on up, in the Kelvin-verse, the Enterprise E must be the size of the second Death Star.
As long as we’re being opinionated, the D will always be the ugliest Enterprise IMHO. That weird oval saucer and those tiny nacelles on swoopy pylons? No thanks.
I have that #3. It’s so rad.
Now I kinda want the flamed KITT (which would break my current rule about only picking up Batmobiles).
Man, I thought I had all the Miatas, but I’ve never seen that one in gray. Got it in a couple other colors, though. Gonna have to keep my eyes peeled.
Same. I think I have that one in green and orange but not grey