mattel

Things are looking up for Icon. The company just moved from its tiny original location to a sprawling new facility, and every machine its craftsmen produce is sold before the final bolts are tightened. There's even talk of finding ways to triple production in order to keep up with demand. In ...

In a perfect world, all of our favorite companies would get along merrily. But sadly, we do not live in a perfect world. Icon, the company behind some of the most lust-worthy vintage off-roaders and street machines in existence, is accusing toymaker Mattel of stealing the FJ40 Baja Edition design ...

If you've been waiting for someone to combine R/C cars and Ken Block's brand of gymkhana, you'll want to pay a visit to Hot Wheels. The toy maker has produced a replica of Block's rallying Ford Fiesta, and after you load the required eight AA batteries you'll be drifting it around corners ...

Like floods, wildfires and tsunamis, the Ken Block marketing machine is a force of nature. The exhibition driver has partnered up with Mattel for a special line of Hot Wheels toys that include 1:64-scale die cast versions of Block's WRC Ford Fiesta in either black or white liveries. As with most ...

Elliot Handler provided countless hours of joy to young men and women around the world. He is one half of the team that founded the Mattel toy company in 1945. Elliot (shown at right with his daughter, Barbara), along with his wife Ruth and Mattel co-founder Harold Matson, established a business ...

Someone over at DadDoes got their hands on the new Hot Wheels Video Racer toys. If you're not familiar with the latest from Mattel, allows us to explain. This newest Hot Wheels car is basically a rolling video camera. A lens sits up front, and it's covered up by a Hot Wheels body. Out back, a ...

In case you hadn't noticed, we're firmly entrenched in the year 2011. Clearly, it's high time for the little 1:64-scale cars your fathers were playing with when they were your little boy's age to get an ...

DeLorean Motor Company recently teamed up with Nike, to bring us a limited-edition sneaker modeled after the iconic, gullwing DMC-12. The Nike Dunk 6.0 DeLorean was limited to just 1,000 pairs and they sold out as soon as stores flipped the sign from CLOSED to OPEN. If you're a fan of the DMC ...

As a society, we seem to like our possessions as small and portable as possible (unless of course we're talking about food portions). Hence, we buy laptops instead of desktops, MP3 players instead of boomboxes and chihuahuas instead of great danes. Or something like that. As such, it's not ...

For better or worse, not all of us can be Sam Witwicky, swapping spit with Megan Fox and attempting to foil galactic evil robots taking the form of common automobiles. But then, there's nothing ...

We have some good news and some bad news. First, the good news, because that's just how we roll. We've got another clip of Megan Fox.. er, Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen. The bad news? It involves a "bad guy" Transformer named Wheelie that has ...

Earlier this week we brought you amazing photos of a Hot Wheel car Mattel valued at $140,000. "WTF?!," is what we heard from a lot of readers who wondered how a $1 toy could possibly be worth more than their entire collections of late-80s Buicks and/or Mustang IIs. We asked similar questions, too, ...

Click the image above to view Polly Wheels in actionMost of the Autoblog readers have been fostering a love for the automobile since a very early stage in life. We collected Hot Wheels and Matchboxes, and we had model cars and remote-controlled hot rods. The one thing those toys have in common is ...

Update: We just added a gallery of high-res photos of the Polly Wheels collection.There is an exhibit area at the New York Auto Show with a staggering 1,190 vehicles on display. And it's "manned" by a trio of vivacious pre-teens playing "Race to the Mall" with a new line of die-cast toy cars made ...

John Neff checked in from SEMA all excited about Mattel's Hot Wheels booth and we totally understand. We'd be willing to bet that many regular Autoblog readers have 1:64 scale hot rods doing 360s on their desks.Mattel knows their market, and sent not only hundreds of their beloved miniature cars, ...

HotWheels Radar Gun ($24.99) Gary Swisher is the guy who has everybody's dream job -- he's the design chief for HotWheels, Tyco and Matchbox, and he's in charge of designing the cool and timeless dream cars in miniature that we only wish we could have when we grow up. He's also the guy ...