Hasta La Gadget!

Hot Wheels’ toy cars let kids pretend they’re hotshot racers. The company’s new Car Maker model kit on the other hand, lets them be factory workers. The kit has a machine that turns a stick of wax into a car body by pressing it into a heated mold. The resulting car body can then be customized with a chassis and stickers.

The molding machine has voice prompts that walk you through the steps for making a car. The machine has a compartment that heats the molds and a chute on top for the wax sticks. It takes about 8 minutes to turn a stick into a car body. There’s a demo video of the kit on Hot Wheels’ website, but in the meantime you can check out the ad below:

The Hot Wheels Car Maker is available on Amazon for $40 (USD). Each kit comes with 10 wax sticks, two molds, three chassis and three sheets of stickers. You can also buy more wax sticks and other kinds of car molds. And if you have a kid, you will buy more wax sticks and car molds.

[via Uncrate]

As a kid, my favorite Hot Wheels toy cars were the ones that changed color in cold or hot water. Tons of fun in the bathtub! But eventually, we all grow up and accept the fact that real cars don’t change colors (or jump through waterfalls). Or, you could hang on to those childhood dreams and paint your real car in thermochromic paint—like these crazy gearheads from the UK. Now to find a bathtub it’ll fit in.

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I like to think that I’m pretty plugged into retro geek culture, but I have to hand it to the guys over at You Found a Secret Area! for turning up something I’ve not seen before – a series of Atari 2600-themed cars from Hot Wheels. Oh, and you can still buy them!

The 1/64th scale die-cast vehicle series is packaged on cards that look like classic Atari 2600 games, including Breakout, Centipede, Pong, Missile Command, and Tempest. There’s even an Atari 2600 party bus (aka Urban Assault Vehicle) for good measure. I’m not sure if the vehicles really make much sense, but they’re still an awesome bit of swag for any collector of Atari 2600 memorabilia. My personal favorite has to be the Centipede monster machine – it totally reminds me of the 1970s with its funny car styling and giant exhaust headers.

Here are a bunch of detailed video shots of each vehicle, courtesy of Hot Wheels Nation:

You can find them over on Amazon for $9.99(USD) each. But you’d better move fast before they all become as hard to find as a copy of Air Raid.

After NASA’s Curiousity attempts its tension-fraught landing on August 5th, you’ll be able to get one yourself in the form of this Hot Wheels die-cast model. The 1:64 scale buggy will reproduce the gutsy rover’s nuclear motor, drill, cameras and laser, while being a galaxy away from the $2.5 billion price tag, at a mere $1.09 or so. The real six-wheeled deal will need to hit all its marks perfectly when it attempts to land in a few days, with a complex sequence involving an atmospheric entry, parachute deployment, retro rocket firing and final crane-style drop. So, if you do end up with the toy version, hopefully it’ll be a good souvenir of a Spirit-like success — and not some other unmentionable Mars excursions.

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, Robots

Mattel casts NASA Curiosity rover die with new Hot Wheels toy originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 02 Aug 2012 07:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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