My brother was more into Matchbox cars than I. However, I remember the coolest toy (I think it was Matchbox vesus the other guy) they made was a gizmo to let you MAKE your own injection mold matchbox cars. Hot molten plastic being forced into a little mold holding two pathetically weak axels w/wheels. Now that was cool.

Ah, the good old days when toys could still give you 3rd degree burns...

Thanks Ed, great job! I loved my Hot Wheels, and had the tracks that wrapped around the flipping block. My fave was to set the track at an extremely steep angle and send the cars flying across my room and into a target.

I loved trying to get the cars to go through the loop-the-loop set, but I didn't really connect them to real cars (well, except for The Batmobile, because Batman was more real than race car drivers -- and then when I saw the real Batmobile at an auto show years later, was crushed because it wasn't as cool as it was in my imagination).

One interesting addition was that Mattel tried to use the axel-wheel configuration from Hot Wheels in other toys. I remember getting a Pebbles and BamBam dolls with roller skates made out of Hot Wheels chassis.

I loved my Hot Wheels cars. I even had
the Supercharger set.I was preferable to
my "Johnny Lightning" cars though.

They were so much faster and flashier.
After a few weeks of usage however,the
damned front wheels would tweak inwards
making them into firecracker fodder.

Screw boys. (MOST figurative.) This female human LOVES Hot Wheels cars with a long-held passion and is most intrigued by the book -- save for any passages saying these toys are male-oriented.

having three boys and one girl Ive seen them grown to the point that I would not pigeon-hole anyone upon what the perceived gender inclinations might be but I have seen them definately split and go their own gender specific ways after adolescence doing away with both my son's ability to play house and my daughter's lack of concern for clothes...to natalie...keep chipping away at societal preconceptions just try to not let it get you bitter

My brothers had Hot Wheels but I didn't. My mother put up with my love of sports but beyond that, I got the girl toys. I can close my eyes though and remember with extreme clarity sitting with my brothers' new cars and checking out the details.

I knew a guy in high school whose dad collected, and I mean collected Hot Wheels, among many other things. When you walked into their house, what did you see? Hot Wheels. Everywhere - he'd even bought official display cases like you'd find in stores for them. He had nearly ever Hot Wheel ever produced, still sealed in blister packs, thousands upon thousands of them adorning every wall in several rooms, plus case after case of stored cars, of course still in blister packs. He would go around to stores every day after work, travelling far out of town to the distand Kmarts/etc. to find those more rare cars (because there were less people to buy them he often found the unusual ones.)

It was a bit of a sickness, but it was really entertaining to see. There's nothing better than the look on the face of a Hot Wheels collector than when you tell him you saw a car in whatever new color scheme they'd come up with to sell a few more. That was one of their techniques - take the same old car and repaint it every so often. The collectors, of course, have to have every derivation. And, man, was he happy to find a flawed car - those were worth big bucks, too, apparently due to their rarity. It's a weird world out there.