The Red Line® Era, Part One
(or, “How It All Got Rolling”)

by HWC Gary
01-11-07

    By the mid-1960s, it can be said that Mattel had become one of the most successful toy companies in the United States – but it was at a crossroads.

    Originally co-founded by Elliot Handler and partner Harold “Matt” Matson, the company entered the toy business in 1947, but Matson left Mattel shortly thereafter. Elliot and his wife Ruth continued to steer Mattel, and it was Ruth’s belief in a franchise introduced by the company in 1959 – the Barbie® doll – that is credited with securing the girls’ market. However, Mattel’s mainstay with boys was toy guns (made popular thanks to television westerns), and the demand for toy guns had begun to slow down. If Mattel was going to stay in the fast lane, the company would have to pave a new road into the hearts and minds – and pockets – of boys.

    Apparently some time in 1966, Elliot found one of his grandchildren playing with die-cast cars made by another toy company, and it occurred to him that Mattel didn’t have a product to compete with that. Despite resistance from his marketing team, Elliot became determined to compete in the die-cast car market. He assigned Jack Ryan, head of Research and Development, the task of guiding a team of about 80 designers, engineers and artists to create the new line. The wheels began to turn.

    The company looked to the source of real cars -- Detroit -- to find an auto designer for their toy cars, and Harry Bentley Bradley became the first designer on the line.

    At first, no one seemed to know exactly what kind of cars Bradley was supposed to create or how they should look. Elliot wasn’t satisfied with Bradley’s first ideas, but then he took a good look at Bradley’s own customized El Camino in the parking lot. It represented the current popular car culture, with modifications such as fuel injector stacks protruding from the hood and red striped tires on mag wheels. Elliot told Bradley to use that for his design inspiration, and the Custom Fleetside was born. The style for Hot Wheels® cars had been defined.

    However, it would take more than a look for the line to succeed. The marketing department had warned that there was already too much traffic in the die-cast market, and that if Mattel were going down that road, they’d have to find a way to rev up the play value. Research had revealed that kids who played with cars liked to race them, but that the cars already on the market at the time didn’t roll very well. Speed became a primary requirement of the new line.

    Mattel’s talented team of engineers, including chief engineer Howard Newman, ultimately worked out the bent-axle torsion-bar suspension system. This gave the cars a little bit of bounce, like real cars, and they would even spring up when you pushed them down. They also made use of inner wheel bearings -- made of a plastic called Delrin -- that would allow each of the wheels to roll independently on the axle.

    Perhaps the most notable development was the outer wheel, made from nylon and formed in a slightly conical shape with a thin ridge on the larger, inner edge of the wheel. This would reduce surface contact to one point, and therefore minimize friction. Using a tampo process, red stripes were stamped onto the wheels to reflect a custom car trend of the time. Eventually referred to affectionately as Red Line® wheels, they would come to identify an era.

    Dubbed the “fastest metal cars in the world,” they would certainly roll fast… but how fast would they sell?

    Development was progressing, but it needed a finishing touch. Based on Bradley’s account of how candy colors were applied to real cars by using transparent colors over silver primer, it was decided that the tiny cars would receive a light zinc-plating to achieve a similar effect. Using a new Ransburg electrostatic paint system, color-tinted toner was applied directly onto the zinc-plated cars, but it was finally a custom blend of paints that would achieve the transparency needed to produce the candy-colored appearance. At last, what would come to be known as a Spectraflame® finish was a shining success.

    Now they needed a name for the line.

    Where exactly the Hot Wheels® name came from is hard to pinpoint. One story suggests that Jack Ryan began to use the term “hot wheels” to refer to the new product, drawing the word “hot” from the term “hot rods.” It has also been suggested that packaging copywriter and “namesmith” Alexandra Laird worked out the name with Elliot. In another recollection, the name came from Elliot Handler’s reaction to seeing a prototype rolling down the hall when he exclaimed, “That’s one set of hot wheels you’ve got there!” Whatever the source, the name was perfect.

    Graphic artist Rick Irons was in the process of developing packaging and a logo for the cars. When he got word that the name would be “Hot Wheels”, he applied it to the famous iconic flame logo that is today recognized worldwide.

    Freelance artist Otto Kuhni was hired to provide illustrations of the cars for the packaging, as well as for metal buttons that Irons designed to be included in the package with the cars. Kuhni’s stylized art would enhance the Hot Wheels® brand for many years to come, and continues to grace the online series of cars at HotWheelsCollectors.com to this day.

    Prior to their New York Toy Fair debut, the cars would be showcased for Ken Sanger, Kmart’s buyer for boys’ toys. Mattel was estimating a modest initial production run of ten to fifteen million cars. However, when they demonstrated the performance of the new cars for Sanger, he ordered a staggering fifty million almost immediately. The toy cars were on the right track for success.

    Many adjustments and alterations were needed in production and manufacturing along the way to filling the millions of initial orders for Hot Wheels® cars. There would even be key personnel changes: Ira Gilford, another veteran of the motor city, was relocated to southern California to take over as the Hot Wheels® designer when Harry Bradley departed. Gilford would complete the last few of the 16 cars that appeared in the line’s inaugural year, and he would go on to drive the wildly successful young line forward in new and exciting directions.

Hot Wheels® Historical Highlights

1966:

• Elliot Handler targets the toy die-cast car market for Mattel’s next boy’s product.
• Automobile designer Harry Bentley Bradley is hired away from Detroit to design the toy cars.

1967:

• Mattel’s engineers develop innovative wheels and suspension to give the cars “play value.”
• The line of toy cars is dubbed “Hot Wheels,“ and a world-famous logo blazes into existence.
• The little cars are rolled out for retailers, who order them by the millions.
• Production begins in the United States -- and expands to Hong Kong.

1968:

• Ira Gilford joins Mattel, taking over as the Hot Wheels® car designer.
• The first 16 Hot Wheels® cars are released at retail and are a major sales success. The toy car designs incorporate style elements from what Mattel calls the "California Custom" look. These style elements include such custom modifications as mag wheels with a red stripe on the tires, bright candy-colored finishes, exposed engines, hood scoops or power bulges, side pipes, and a “rake” -- larger rear wheels to make the front end appear lower. Each car is released in multiple colors, with other features such as opening hoods or exposed engines on some cars and, in the case of the Custom Volkswagen, a slide-open sun roof.
• The toy cars include many innovations: castings are finished in Spectraflame® paint, equipped with bent-axle torsion-bar suspension, and placed on what later became known as “Red Line® wheels” (hence the “Red Line Era”).
• Track sets featuring the familiar orange track that would become a Hot Wheels® staple were also introduced this first year to help sell the cars’ performance.

16 from ’68 - The first 16 Hot Wheels® cars can be loosely categorized as follows:

• Six mildly customized muscle cars:
  1. Custom Camaro * (Believed by some to be the first Hot Wheels® car produced.)
  2. Custom Mustang * (Believed by others to be the first Hot Wheels® car produced.)
  3. Custom Corvette * (Available in stores before the release of the real car by GM.)
  4. Custom Firebird * (The first convertible in the Hot Wheels® line.)
  5. Custom Barracuda
  6. Custom Cougar

• Two mildly customized luxury cars:

7. Custom Eldorado
8. Custom T-Bird

• Two heavily customized cars:

9. Custom Fleetside * (The first car designed, based on the actual customized car owned by original Hot Wheels® designer Harry Bradley.)
10. Custom Volkswagen * (The only non-American model in the original 16 cars.)

• Five custom car designer creations:

11. Silhouette * (Based on the custom car by Bill Cushenberry.)
12. Deora* (Based on the truck designed for Dodge by Harry Bradley.)
13. Beatnik Bandit * (Based on the show car by Ed “Big Daddy” Roth.)
14. Hot Heap (Based on the Model T Roadster show car by Don Tognotti.)
15. Python (Based on Car Craft magazine’s “Dream Car” by Bill Cushenberry.)

• One actual racing car:

16. Ford J-Car (Based on the Ford race car designed and raced by Carroll Shelby.)

* Indicates that this casting, or a version thereof, is currently in the Hot Wheels® production line.

Sources
    The following books and guides are excellent sources for more thorough details about Hot Wheels® cars and products, and their history:

• Leffingwell, Randy. Hot Wheels®: 35 Years of Speed, Power, Performance and Attitude. Motorbooks International, an imprint of MBI Publishing Company, 2003.
• Strauss, Michael Thomas. Tomart’s Price Guide to Hot Wheels Collectibles – 5th Edition. Tomart Publications, 2002.
• Clark, Jack and Wicker, Robert P. Hot Wheels: The Ultimate Redline Guide 1968 – 1977 – 2nd Edition. Collector Books, 2005.
• Clark, Jack and Wicker, Robert P. Hot Wheels: The Ultimate Redline Guide 1968 – 1977 Volume 2. Collector Books, 2003.