The year was 1968 and Mattel introduced a new line of diecast toy vehicles called Hot Wheels. Hot Wheels diecast were marketed as a competitor to the Matchbox cars produced by the British company Lesney Products.

Obviously Mattel's decision was a good one as Hot Wheels are still as hot today as they were over forty years ago. A lot of the reason for the early success of Hot Wheels over the competition was the look of the cars, they were flashy.

Mattel chose to give the cars a "California look" and model the vehicles after the muscle cars of the 60's. The exterior paint was done in bright, metallic colors with paint Mattel called Spectraflame. Acording to Mattel the colors were red, blue, green, purple, orange, blue fog, olive, gold, aqua, brown, lime, lavender, magenta, and lime gold.

I can remember the diecast vehicles my brother owned as a child and I always thought the Hot Wheels were "prettier" than the Matchbox cars.

In addition to the Spectraflame paint these vintage hot wheel diecast cars had something else that set them apart and makes them coveted by collectors today...the redline tires. Hot Wheels cars produced from 1968 until 1977 had a red stripe on the side of the tires just like some of the popular muscle cars tires did.

Mattel produced 16 different vintage hot wheels in 1968 which many collectors call the "sweet sixteen".

The Hot Wheels sweet sixteen vehicles were the:

• Custom Barracuda
  
• Custom Camaro
• Custom Corvette
• Custom Cougar
• Custom Eldorado
• Custom Firebird
• Custom Fleetside
• Custom Mustang
• Custom T-Bird
• Custom Volkswagon
• Beatnik Bandit
  
• Deora
• Ford J-Car
  
• Hot Heap
• Python
• Silhouette

The Mattel toy catalog published in 1968 showed that each of the 16 diecast models was supposed to be produced in two of the fourteen different colors.

This soon changed and each vehicle was produced in almost all of the fourteen Spectraflame colors.

According to Hot Wheel collectors there a numerous variations in the fourteen paint colors, so for example not all blue cars are the same shade of blue.

Many hot wheels collections are based solely on color. The color that's hardest to find the vintage hot wheels in today is variations of the magenta color.

Since these were toys for little boys, I imagine that the magenta pink color didn't sell very well leading Mattel to limit the amount of Hot Wheels that were produced in that color.

While the little boys don't care, if you are a serious collector and you are interested in how much that Hot Wheel you have or want is worth, a Hot Wheels Price Guide can help you out!

Vintage Hot Wheels values are based on a variety of things among them are of course condition and how rare a particular model or color is.

If you have a Hot Wheels diecast collection from childhood or are beginning to collect Hot Wheels you really should have a Hot Wheels price guide to use for reference.

There are many price guides available and Tomart's price guides seem to be popular with collectors.

Little boys today enjoy and play with Hot Wheels as much as little boys did in 1968.

Some of those people who were little boys in 1968 still enjoy Hot Wheels, they just collect them more than play with them now.

Some people collect any and every Hot Wheel they can find, while others are a little more picky. I was interested to learn that there are lots of different types of Hot Wheels collections.

There are collections based on Hot Wheels produced in specific years or in certain colors, there are collectors who only collect Hot Wheels that are one particular vehicle.

In a day and age when everything seems to have increased tremendously in price newly manufactured Hot Wheels have not. When first introduced they sold for around fifty nine cents, today you can buy them for around one dollar which makes them an inexpensive introduction to collecting toys. Of course, the vintage Hot Wheels go for a little more money.

Who knows the new Hot Wheel you buy for one dollar today may be one of the highly sought after collectible Hot Wheels in the future.