During the fledgling Hot Wheels era, Mattel wanted to make sure that each of the cars could be used with any of the play sets and stunt track sets. When Wood found out about Hot Wheels at a party Rees was holding, Rees offered Wood the job of designing Hot Wheels. The Mainline is sorted into 35 different mini collections – including the mini collection chosen by collectors, HW: The ’80s! There was some reproduction RLBB made by brightvision not by Mattel and there was even another cheap knock of the brightvision casting. Unfortunately, testing showed that this early version (now known as Rear-Loader Beach Bomb, or RLBB) was too narrow to roll effectively on Hot Wheels track or be powered by the Super Charger, and was too top-heavy to negotiate high-speed corners.

The first run of these cars were available for a limited time only, from the beginning of October towards the end of November 2005. The initial prototypes of the Beach Bomb were faithful to a real VW Bus's shape, and had two surfboards sticking out the back window. Hot Wheels introduces its first line of Character Cars with the launch of Toy Story Character Cars that year. Packaged along with the cars were metal badges showing an image of the car so fellow collectors could identify each other and compare collections.However the axles were hard to install on the chassis while being assembled and would become detached from the lugs on the baseplate if very hard pressure was applied.

Some of Hot Wheels' greatest cars, such as the Twin Mill and Splittin' Image, came from Ira Gilford's drawing board.Upon collection of all 4 vouchers, one was able to send away for a special 13th Treasure Hunt, a VW Drag Bus. One was the 1995 Model Series, which included all of that year's new castings, 12 Models in the Model Series. Harry Bentley Bradley did not think that would be the case and had quit Mattel to go back to the car industry.

There are now only 5 main Series: 50 HW City Rides cars, 25 HW Imagination Cars, 25 HW Stunt cars, 50 HW Racing Cars, and 100 HW Showroom cars, for a total of 250 cars for the year.I already have some of those in my hot wheels collection and I will be on the hunt for the rest of them this year and I can't wait to add all of them to my hot wheels collection. As part of the Hot Wheels Fearless at the 500 event, Rallycross driver Tanner Foust (shown right) successfully lands a ramp-to-ramp distance jump of 332 feet. Many short segments were created and shown on the web with the drivers (grouped into teams: Teku, Metal Maniacs, the evil Racing Drones, and the stealthy Silencerz) handling many different racing conditions in "realms". Ultra Hots wheels, which looked like the wheels found on a Renault Fuego or a Mazda 626, were introduced in 1984 and had other speed improvements.

Hot Wheels started offering models based off of 80's economy cars, like the Pontiac Fiero or Dodge Omni 024. Steve Gilmore (Ford) and Gary Ragle (Mitsubishi) had formerly interned with the Hot Wheels Design Team and their submissions made the cut. Gilford, who had just left Chrysler, quickly accepted the job of designing the next Hot Wheels models. No one ever hears it coming, but the impact this copter makes will leave everyone waiting for a sequel!In 2005, Hot Wheels continued with new "extreme" castings for the 2nd year, debuting 40 distorted cars, in addition to 20 "Realistix" models. In 1983 McDonald's first released Hot Wheels in their Happy Meals and the same year the Hot Wheels production plant was moved to Malaysia. Treasure Hunts are highlighted in green (but you’ll have to discover the Super Treasure Hunts for yourself). As with the low-friction wheels in 1968, this innovation was revolutionary in the industry, and — although far less effective in terms of sales impact than in 1968 — was copied by the competition, who did not want to be outmaneuvered again by Mattel product strategists. Although Bradley was from the car industry, he had not designed the full-functioning versions of the real cars, except the Dodge Deora concept car, which had been built by Mike and Larry Alexander.