When You Were Sweet Sixteen

I'm always keen to look at Hot Wheels cars and here is the aforementioned 'Sweet Sixteen' catalogue with the gorgeously sleek artwork representing the first releases.

later catalogues would use actual photographs of the models, but Mattel's initial release uses the wonderfully stylistic packaging to set the line apart from the more traditional Matchbox and Tootsietoy lines. 

Hot Wheels were always much superior runners, due to the sprung suspension and the physical weight of the cars, a feature that Lesney's Matchbox range tried to compete with in the later release of the Superfast line.

For me, the big attraction was the exotic and original space-age styling as seen in the Swingin' Wing or Splittin' Image.

Some later models included extra action features, such as the Whip Creamer and the spinning turbine in the rear.

The paint finish on Hot Wheels Redlines made them stand out from other cars, along with the 'mag' wheels with the signature red line stripe, Spectraflame paint is a fine layer of colour applied directly to the polished bare metal body, aloowing the shine to set off the colour and making the cars visually different from the standard enamels. These paints are available for use with airbrushes, allowing faithful restorations of old models to be carried out. Replacement wheels and reproduction plastic parts can also be purchased from specialist model sites.

The Twinmill was an early release which was re-issued recently in a casting similar to its 1970 version, but also updated with more modern takes on the styling.

The first catalogues showed a muscle car which did not appear in the line, but which was released as a new casting a few years back as a fan club exclusive and later as part of the main line. New York based Terranova found a Target Exclusive version in gold for me to grace my collection too.