Hot Wheels

This may the among the first of a dubious trend - a 30-minute toy commercial masquerading as a Saturday morning cartoon. Hot Wheels was a wildly popular toy car line, spawning several imitators (like Johnny Lightning). As a product, it was quite enjoyable, and a high-quality product that now is among the mega-collectible boomer toys. And yes, my mom in fact DID throw out my "wheel" carrying case with all my cars in it! But I digress

Hard to say how the cartoon came about. Did someone say, "hey, my kids love Hot Wheels cars, let's make a cartoon vaguely related to Hot Wheels and cash in", or alternatively, "hey, I had this great idea - why not make a cartoon about our toy, and maybe we can sneak it into the Saturday morning line up, advertise our toy, and also get paid for doing it!"

The cartoon itself was the typical, generic, limited animation that looked like it cost about $150 an episode to produce. The plot was nominally about a race car club competing in some unspecified series, with some rival "bad guy" car club as a frequent antagonist. Rule #1 about cartoons - if it's about a race, it's gonna stink! This cartoon did not prove to be the exception, it stunk out loud. Nonetheless, it worked pretty well and it was relatively popular for a while. Whether it ever sold any more Hot Wheels cars is unclear.

I vaguely recall an airplane-related sister series, but it's been too many years.

This is probably the first cartoon I can remember. I was 4 when this came out, and I remember the theme song to this day. The idea of a 30 minute commercial is quite normal by todays standards, since every cartoon out there now sells merchandise. I would like to see this come out on DVD now, because there are those of us out here that remember the cartoon, and would love to go back to 1969 and revisit this era, when it seems everything was better (at least for a kid).

I doubt the original posters will check back here since the comments are all several years apart but for future visitors here is a little more info. Mattel sold at least three cars from the show. I have three(yes, still have them!): the Jack Rabbit Special which was white and blue, the Sand Crab (the only one I have that is not the same color as the show's. Mine is hot pink.) and the Demon (Dexter's car). I read the lyrics posted and could not even come close to envisioning the melody. I am glad that my memory is not that cluttered. I don't know why, but I kept my cars, but I am glad that I did. They aren't in great shape because I actually played with them. I still regret taking my double decker super charger to the dump, because it still worked great.

A some of the other posters have mentioned, this and "Skyhawks" were probably the earliest examples of cartoon series that had a toy tie in. Of course, this was several years before shows like "Transformers", "He Man" and "GI Joe" would hit the airwaves and would make weekday afternoons into a virtual infomercial for various toys. However, this show was one of the first and probably one of the best. I still fondly remember it and I would look forward to watching it on Saturday morning. At least they had some cool animation to make you keep watching even if you didn't want the toys. Of course, I did get plenty of Hot Wheels cars as well as the tracks, but this cartoon really didn't have an impact on my decision. Besides, I was only three years old at the time.

This definitely is a lost classic.

Yeah I remember both shows! They were my favorites for those few seasons. I had the "Sky hawk" airplane they advertised, the Super Star by Mattel. Remember.. Where ever you are, there's a piece of the sky, waiting for Super Star!? i had the original sizzlers, the hot wheels super charger race sets four or five of them... the jumps the ramps the quick release sets with the plastic clamps that went on a door or chair. I had lots of johnny lightnings too and match box and other crappy cars. I never got the big Hot wheel carry case, but my dad tried to throw out my hot wheels lunch boxes... instead they carry tools now.. Some how I always knew they would be worth money some day.. but I never kept them in good shape... My favorite car was the Jack Rabbit special! I guess because of the show.. funny how nobody ever made that car for real... Too bad... I'd buy one!