Mark Jones considers himself blessed to have had a long career designing toy vehicles for Mattel. He is known as “The Godfather” among the design team as his career designing Hot Wheels dates back to the early ’90s. After a short stint over at Matchbox working on the Skybusters line, Mark returned to Hot Wheels in 2014. He has become a legend among collectors for all his work designing premium castings for adult retail. He retired in April of 2023.
We have a tank! All apologies to the #Tanknator aside, this is the first realistic tank released in a Hot Wheels line since 1997 when we saw the last releases of the Command Tank and Tough Customer tank castings. The #UNSC Scorpion is a brand-new, #First Edition tank […]
Anyone remember when Volkswagens were all the rage in the mid-2000s? It seemed as though anything #VW flew off the shelves. Of course there was the #Volkswagen Drag Bus selling out repeatedly at HotWheelsCollectors.com (HWC), but there was also a huge following in the VW Beetle, VW Karman […]
It seems as though Hot Wheels has finally dipped into the video game licensing with #Gran Turismo, #FORZA Motorsport, #Super Mario and even #Minecraft. To those of us that have been clamoring for this for years, it seemed like a no-brainer. Now that the #2017 Hot Wheels have started […]
The #Hot Wheels Entertainment Line #FORZA Motorsport mix may very well be the best wave from the 4-year-old line yet! With the line back for its 5th year in 2017, it will carry a new name as it will now be known as the “Replica Entertainment” line — and […]
As an editor (moderator) over at HotWheelsCollectors.com (HWC), I often see collectors clamoring for the Red Line Club (RLC) of years’ past — often referring to the beginning as the “glory years”. Well, I can recall those years pretty vividly and they weren’t as seamless as most can […]
The Hot Wheels #Cat-A-Pult was first released as part of the 1998 First Editions and was definitely a pegwarmer until the casting was ultimately retired as part of the 2004 Final Run Series (shown below). See this little car just never caught on in the mainstream Hot Wheels crowd as […]
Today is the first day of #ViperWeek here at Orange Track Diecast. From now until next Friday, we will be looking at the seven Hot Wheels #Dodge #Viper castings. Today, we look at the Dodge Viper GTS-R casting, which is my least favorite casting but if you’ve ever […]
In the second half of the last decade, Hot Wheels got all nostalgic on us by re-releasing several old track sets from the redline era. Complete with packaging art by original packaging artist Otto Kuhni, these sets were released under the Hot Wheels Classics umbrella and featured newer […]
Only the designers at Hot Wheels can successfully take an ice cream truck and turn it into a hot rod! As one of #Mark Jones Designs, the Cool-One first caught the eye of collectors and kids alike when it appeared on the 2004 Hot Wheels “Hot 100” Poster […]
One of the more under-utilized castings in Hot Wheels history is the Chaparral 2D. It was only used 3 times since its initial 2003 First Editions release. Sure, there are castings that have been “one-and-dones” but considering this Chaparral had a 9-year run, you would assume that we would have seen more releases […]
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