New Retro Hot Wheels Will Make You Feel Like a Kid Again

They're even in vintage packaging, for that extra dose of nostalgia.
www.thedrive.com

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Hot Wheels is ready to roll you down that plastic orange road to the glory days of youth, thanks to their 2016 Retro Sets: old-school cars, tracks, and accessories, all wrapped up in vintage-style packaging. Originally intended only for Target stores, these throwback toys are already all over eBay—at inflated prices, of course.

The fifteen 1:64-scale cars of the Retro Diecasts collection are the heart of the set, representing the fantastical Hot Wheels vehicles of yore. The first group of eight cars is out now, featuring a rose-colored ’68 El Camino, a light green ’77 Plymouth Arrow, a gray ’84 Hurst Olds, a purple ’87 Toyota­­­­ pickup, and a white Volkswagen SP2, as well as more outlandish old-school rides like the chrome Battle Spec racer, bubble-topped Power Pipes, and the gloriously absurd twin-engined Twin Mill. The remaining seven cars—an ’80s Corvette, a 1985 Chevrolet Camaro IROC-Z, a Baja Bug, a Porsche 930, and the imaginary Bone Shaker, GT-03, and Hammered Coupe—arrive in August.

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Hot Wheels

Of course you’ll need a way to carry all those tiny cars around. The Car-Go Race Hauler ($15) can be loaded with 24 cars, for long-distance trucking to your home’s carpets and hardwood floors. When the ideal location to race has been found, the truck can be reconfigured into a standalone, dual-lane “gravity shooter” race track, or provide additional track for a compatible set.

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Hot Wheels

The Elimination Race ($20) sets four cars against each other at the start—but only one will reach the finish line a little more than 4 feet down the track. Since it wouldn’t be Hot Wheels without acrobatics, “elimination” here means the losing cars are catapulted off the track one by one. The set only comes with one vehicle, so you’ll want to pick up some Retro Diecasts to fill out the field.

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Hot Wheels

The Sto & Go ($30) is for the Gordon Gekkos of the Hot Wheels world. It’s a pricey, portable double-decker playset and collector’s cabinet that’s sure to make grown men shriek, “OH MY GOD, I USED TO HAVE ONE OF THOSE!”

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Hot Wheels

And The Dash & Crash Speedway ($25), which comes with two cars, needs just one short phrase to silence all challengers and assert its dominance: Twin loop-the-loops, bitches.

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Hot Wheels

Really, there’s no bad choice here. Any one of these sets will turn the present day into the good old ones quicker than E.T. or Bugs Bunny ever could.