Hot Wheels of the Day

Bassline

AcceleRacers / Drone’d Series

RELEASE YEAR: 2006 • CASTING DESIGNER: Blake Allen

In 2006, the #AcceleRacers line was back for the second consecutive year. It wouldn’t, however, make it to the end. We have seen this time and time again, Hot Wheels releases a line, doesn’t finish it, and the vehicles in the last couple waves end up being some of the more sort after ones. AcceleRacers is no different!

When AcceleRacers was first released in 2005, it did not have adult collector buy-in. It was a kids series on Cartoon Network that followed up the #Highway 35 World Race movie. The #AcceleRacers also had a card game associated with it which I can only assume was the Hot Wheels response to seeing kids collecting Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh! cards at the time. The majority of Hot Wheels collectors at the time didn’t buy into the line because all 36 vehicles were brand-new, #Unlicensed Hot Wheels.

17 years later, those kids that watched the AcceleRacers series on TV are now entering the world of Hot Wheels collecting. They aren’t so young anymore and have a growing income to be able to buy the toys from their childhood — sound familiar, huh? This new breed of Hot Wheels collectors have fond memories of the show and have now contributed to the growing fandom surrounding #Highway 35 World Race and #AcceleRacers. Case in point: check out their meetup at the Legends event in El Segundo…

As far as our Hot Wheels of the day, the 2006 #AcceleRacers line was merely an extension of the show as — I don’t believe — vehicles like the #Bassline ever wore their new decos in the show. Maybe if the television series had continued, we would have seen a story line in which the cars did swap paint to form new teams. As far as I know, the several segment series in the 2006 AcceleRacers were done to give these vehicles a fresh look at retail.

As a collector who collected the line at the time, I remember being excited to find one of my favorite releases from the year prior — the #TEKU #Bassline — in the evil #Racing Drones deco.

These days, this #Racing Drones #Bassline (from the 2006 Drone’d series) is quite the desirable piece among Hot Wheels collectors who collect the #AcceleRacers line. It is clear that the production numbers from the first year of AcceleRacers exceed that of the second year. Click the handy eBay button below and you’ll see what I mean. The releases from the 2006 AcceleRacers line are few and far between compared to the 2005 AcceleRacers. And with the Bassline being one of the more popular vehicles in one of the more favorable decos, that has certainly helped increase the demand (and subsequently the price) of the Drone’d Bassline.

Color (material): Black (plastic)
Chassis (material): Unpainted (metal)
Windows: Green Tint
Interior: Chrome
Deco: Racing Drones livery
Wheels: Chrome-Rim, Gray Co-Mold 6-Spoke Wheels w/ Green Tires
Country of Manufacture: Malaysia
Toy# (SKU): J7243

ESTIMATED MARKET VALUE (Carded, August 2022)

$95.00 ▲

AcceleRacers in general have sharply risen in value over the last couple of years. Some of the more rare cars from the last wave of the first year — like the Chicane and the Reverb — are now fetching several hundred dollars on eBay. Even the common releases like the TEKU Bassline sell in the $30-$40 range. So, roughly $95 for a #Racing Drones #Bassline is a pretty decent deal if you can find one for that price. These were hard to find at retail in 2006 as I recall the big box stores such as Walmart and Target had already dropped the line forcing those of us that were trying to complete the set to find elsewhere. I have several other #AcceleRacers from the 2006 line and most of them were purchased at Kohl’s (department store) of all places. I regret not buying more when I could. I am still searching for the Bassline from the 2006 AcceleRacers in TEKU livery with the blue CM6 wheels — those never come up for sale!