via Yanko Design

50 years ago, Hot Wheels made its first set of miniature automobile toys, using a die-cast outer body. Starting with outlandish designs and making it their signature (before building a few existing car designs too), Hot Wheels have come a long way, enchanting children for half a century, myself included. When you chart the evolution of Hot Wheels cars, you don’t notice the same trends as those of automobiles. You notice qualities that are much more aspirational to a different user base, so Hot Wheels’ trend chart’s always been to do incredibly cool things that entice children as well as the inner child in adults.

Hot Wheels have done a lot of things in the past 50 years. They’ve made modded cars, pandered to movie franchises and pop cultures, made some incredible adrenaline-filled race-tracks and theme sets, made Hot Wheels DIY kits, outlandish cars inspired by outlandish creatures, cars with bottle-openers integrated into the spoiler, cars that change color based on temperature, and even a Hot Wheels GoPro mount… and when you see how far they’ve come in the past 50 years, it’s truly worth admiring.

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