Hot Wheels are a retail oddity. The price of the beloved toy has managed to hover around $1 — for more than 50 years.
An early Hot Wheels advertisement featuring some of its original cars.Those prices, combined with promotions at gas stations, were crucial in the early success of Hot Wheels, Pascal said.
"There were a lot of gas stations in the 1970s where if you filled your car up with 8 gallons of gas, you got either a free Hot Wheels or you got one for 69 cents, but most of them gave it to you for free," Pascal said."Mostly Shell gas stations, but also private gas stations wanted to get in the game."It's been nearly 55 years since Handler cooked up the idea for Hot Wheels and Ted Wu is helping to keep things pretty radical at the company.
Wu, Mattel's vice president of design for Hot Wheels, swiveled the chair in his Los Angeles home office in November to show off a collaboration the company did on a"Someone stole my Gucci car, oh no," Wu said, laughing, unable to find the $120 car on the shelves behind him."We did the Cadillac Seville. This was a literal Cadillac that Gucci did back in 1972. So we did a die-cast version of it for Gucci's 100th anniversary.
The Cadillac marked Hot Wheels' first high fashion collaboration and one that reflects the evolution of the toy brand and is a reason why so many of its cars maintain that $1 price. Wu leads a design team of 60 people spread across the U.S. and Asia who are responsible for each Hot Wheels model. The team includes former automotive designers who have worked for Toyota and General Motors, he said.
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