Some wishes do come true

When I wanted to get creative with my Hot Wheels, my mom gave me some acrylic paints and a brush. Of course, that was enough for me at the time. I gave my firetruck a proper set of lights, I turned my white rocket car into a red rocket car and my NASA motor home turned into another firetruck (I had a thing for firetrucks). There was a time when just about every car got a new paint job. I wasn’t too concerned with performance, I just wanted them to look cool. Now lets scoot ahead a couple decades and I’m still customizing Hot Wheels cars, only this time I have a budget.

One of the best things about growing up is you can finally afford all the things you wanted as a kid but couldn’t have for one reason or another. For me, that included being able to make my own Hot Wheels. Painting cars was fun and all, but what kid didn’t want to design and build his or her own toy car? Now I can do all the things I ever wanted with minimal investment…and so can you! With a few cars, a drill, some paint, a free weekend and a little creativity, you can start making your own Hot Wheels…true one-of-a-kind toys.

You won't find this car in any toy store.

Taking apart your Hot Wheels

The first thing you need are some cars. Thankfully, Hot Wheels are still a dollar and you can find them everywhere. Grab a few cars you think look cool and be prepared to throw one or two away, a lot of this is trial-and-error. Next, grab your drill and your set of drill bits. You’ll need a 1/16 bit and a 3/16 bit. Flip the car over and you’ll find two rivets, one in the front and one in the rear. With your 1/16 bit, drill yourself a guide hole. You don’t have to drill far, maybe a quarter inch. Once you have your guide hole, use the 3/16 bit and drill straight down on the rivet until you grind it down to the plastic. You’re almost done! Now flip the car back over and push down on the windshield.

If you’ve done things right, the car should just pop apart. If it doesn’t feel like it’s doing what you want, drill a little bit more on the rivet. It will take a few times to figure this out. Grinding down rivets might not sound too hard, but if you drill at an angle or don’t get the entire head of the rivet, you’ll just spread it out more, making it even hard to get the car apart. Once you get it, you should have a pile of parts in front of you that look something this.

Is there anything more fun than taking things apart?

Your own private Hot Wheels chop shop

Now that you have your car apart, you can pretty much do anything you want. The less-involved things include swapping out wheels and interiors. You’ll find many Hot Wheels cars share the same size axles and wheels, so if you see a car with cool tires you can take those and put them on another body, not unlike when you swapped out the bodies and legs of your GI Joe figures…or was that just me?

Of course, if you want to get serious, you’ll want to strip the body down to the bare metal and start there. I should disclaim that everything beyond some simple wheel swaps requires some items that aren’t child-safe, so be aware that you’ll need some safety gear and should be very careful when handling power tools and chemicals. Now that the warning is out of the way, we can get down to business.

To get your car into its birthday suit you’ll take one of two routes. The first route requires some sort of grinder or sand paper. I suggest using a Dremel – the hobbyist’s best friend – it just makes things easier. You can sand down the stock paint on your car and go from there, or you can just dunk your car into a can of paint stripper and it’ll do all the work for you. Aircraft remover paint stripper is some serious stuff that you can find at your local auto parts store. It’s used to remove real car paint but it will also remove other things, including plastics and even your skin…better wear some gloves. After 15 minutes in the can of goo, your car will come out naked and ready for paint.

I pity da fool that don't enjoy painting Hot Wheels!

The emperor’s new clothes

You can paint your car with any type of paint. I suggest you spray the metal body with a coat of primer first, it’ll help the paint stick and make the color stand out more. Acrylic paints will work but for the best results you’ll want to use some type of spray paint. If you want to go the cheap route, just get a big can of paint from your home store and give it a spray. There is also a wide range of model spray paints that you can find at the hobby store. They come in every color of the rainbow…some glossy, some matte, some with glitter and sparkles…the choice is yours. Make it as a crazy and cool as you want.

Congratulations, you just gave your car an awesome, custom paint job! Adding other things to your car from here is just icing on the cake. You’ll find water decals look great on the car and are very easy to work with. And don’t forget the fun of taking parts from other cars and adding them to another to create your own creations. With a Dremel in your hand you can do almost anything. Take a motor from a car and put it on the hood of another to create a blown engine. There are thousands of Hot Wheels cars out there so the combinations of awesomeness are endless.

Putting it all back together

But wait, we need to put our car back together! If you want your new one-off car to be sturdy and be handled, you have to glue it back together. Assuming you’re done grinding and painting, just put your car back together and flip it over. The holes you drilled at the start should lineup with the rivets you ground down to nubs. With the car together, just drop some super glue into the holes and wait. Although, if you want to go pro, get some stuff called JB Kwik at the hardware store, it’s liquid metal. Mix up a small batch and put some in your drill holes. After 10 minutes the stuff will harden and your car will be as solid as one that just came off the shelf.

Make all your favorite Hollywood movie cars...like Mad Max!

Cheap fun for your inner child

All of this is just scratching the surface of what you can do when you treat Hot Wheels as little 1:64 scale car models. With a little Googling you’ll find some incredible custom Hot Wheels that it’s hard to believe started as $1 toys from the grocery store. I’ve found customizing Hot Wheels is an acceptable excuse to play with a beloved childhood toy because it requires power tools and man’s God-given talent of taking things apart. It’s a challenge, it’s cheap and it’s something you can show off with a smile…I mean, you just made your own toy! Not bad.

If you need some more inspiration, check out 5 Ways to Enjoy Your Hot Wheels. And when you get serious about Hot Wheels, I’ll meet you over at RedlineDerby.com for some real competition.

The man behind Hot Wheels

The inventor of Hot Wheels recently passed away. His name was Elliot Handler and he was 95 years old, but let’s not discount the fact that the man also co-founded the entire Mattel toy empire, so his impact goes well beyond Hot Wheels. To be honest, I didn’t know his name until one of my friends posted about his death. That might be shameful of me to not know the man’s name but it got me thinking about how much we really take the toys we have for granted. Many toys, like Hot Wheels, have been around for so long that it’s easy to forget that someone actually had to invent them. Diecast cars are so ubiquitous these days that we rarely stop to think about how awesome they really are. Something so simple can be so much fun to play with and enjoy.

Undoubtedly one of the best birthday presents ever.

The passion grows

Staple childhood toys like Hot Wheels were not chosen by us, they were just given to us. I don’t recall the first time I told my mom I wanted Hot Wheels. It was a toy I just received without asking and from there my love of them grew. They were as popular then as they are now and because I’m a boy, friends and family always got them for me as presents. Hot Wheels were (and still are) cheap to buy and always put a smile on my face, so for boys they’re an easy “go to” gift. I don’t even remember how many Hot Wheels cars I had as a kid, hundreds probably passed through my hands…but I always wanted more. You could never have too many Hot Wheels.

When I think about all the toys I grew up with, I’ve learned that there is a common way to tell when a toy meant a lot to a kid…when you received the “rip off” versions of the same toy and got mad about it. It doesn’t matter what popular toy you’re talking about…Hot Wheels, GI Joe, LEGO…you loved them so much that you could spot, and would reject, imitations in a heartbeat. You could smell a fake a mile away, a skill our parents could never quite figure out. There was nothing worse than being excited about a present only to open it up and find some sort of bootleg version, and Hot Wheels was no different. Parents and grandparents would try to pawn off cheap Woolworth’s diecast cars as Hot Wheels but I knew better. The quality, the colors, the style and the fun just wasn’t there. If there’s one thing Hot Wheels is not, it’s being able to be copied.

Imitated but never duplicated.

Toys that are meant to be played with

Many of the Hot Wheels you see on the shelves today are little more than mini versions of real life car models…Corvettes, Porsches, Volkswagens, etc…but the other half of the Hot Wheels catalog were fantastic designs that could speak to every child. The crazy designs created by Hot Wheels looked like they came right out of the pages of my childhood sketch book. I loved Hot Wheels because they weren’t normal, whereas brands like Matchbox cars were all about accuracy. They were the “collector” cars…but really, what kid wants a Mustang when they can have a Sol-Aire CX-4? If you just wanted to put cars on a shelf, you got Matchbox cars. If you wanted cars you could play with, you got Hot Wheels. And don’t forget about all the “gimmick” cars that Hot Wheels released of the years; cars that changed color in water, cars with peepholes and pictures on the inside and cars that came “pre-wrecked” and flipped when they hit the wall. Mattel knew what they were doing and knew what kids wanted…and we wanted to play. Hard.

Why have a Porsche when you can have the Bone Shaker?

Hot Wheels are certainly the toy cars with the best performance when it came to play time. They are made to be played with. Hot Wheels are meant to be scooted across kitchen floors and flung off of ramps made of shoe boxes and magazines. Of course, what every kid really wanted was just miles and miles of the iconic Hot Wheels “orange track” that came with the playsets. I remember taking all of the Hot Wheels track I could find and connecting it all together to make a giant downhill track on the steps in my house. Sure, you’d toss your Matchbox cars and other dime store cars down your track too, but none of them could hold a candle to the real deal of Hot Wheels.

I’ll never forgive myself

However, as I grew up, my Hot Wheels found a fate that many of my toys experienced – total destruction. I’m not sure if every boy goes through a “blow everything up” phase, but I did and nothing was off limits, including my Hot Wheels. Most of my cars along with my GI Joe figures, Transformers, Construx and many other toys suffered a fate of low end fireworks, bonfires, brick smashing, dismantling and even the occasional drowning in my sandbox when it was filled with water. It’s hard for me to think back to that time because I’m not really sure what came over me that made me destroy all my toys. It makes me sad, and not because I’m thinking what all of those toys would be worth today…it makes me sad just because I loved them so much and I still do. Thankfully though, becoming an adult affords us all an opportunity to reclaim a little bit of our childhood, and I did just that when it came to Hot Wheels.

Picking up where childhood left off

As I mentioned before, Hot Wheels are still a very cheap toy to buy – they’re still only a dollar. Find me another toy that hasn’t changed its price in more than 20 years! In a world of $12 action figures and other expensive gadget toys, the simplicity of Hot Wheels combined with the attractive price cannot be beat. About 10 years ago I started collecting Hot Wheels again. I never left Target or Walmart without at least one car in my bag…usually a dozen or more, actually. It’s a great feeling to go on a Hot Wheels shopping spree and know you’ve only spent $20 for 20 cars. At first I was selectively collecting them, only buying the models I wanted and putting them on a display case my grandpa made me when I was a kid. It felt good to reclaim some of my childhood but putting them on a shelf to admire just wasn’t enough. It didn’t feel right, so I went about finding a way to have fun with Hot Wheels as an adult.

My first custom Hot Wheels. Not too bad, I guess.

The solution turned out to be something I and all men are pretty good at – taking things apart. I started exploring the customization of Hot Wheels cars. I’d take them apart, paint them, modify their bodies, swap out tires…just about anything. Although, what kid didn’t paint their Hot Wheels at some point? I would take my mom’s acrylic paints and give my cars quite a covering, but now with better tools at my disposal, I could do the job right, effectively turning my Hot Wheels into very tiny model projects. I even brought a car that survived my childhood back to life. I took these experiences to the web and started blogging about what I was doing and how I was doing it. It was fun and got a few eyeballs but not until I took my Hot Wheels chop shop to the world of racing did things start to get interesting.

No other toy has done more for me

Give me some track and some Hot Wheels and I'm happy.

If you were ever in a club like Boy Scouts that did pinewood derby races, then you know what I’m talking about. Giving Hot Wheels new paint jobs and shiny wheels is one thing, but trying to make them faster in a downhill race is another thing entirely. I continued writing about my Hot Wheels racing and somehow it turned into an entire online game, a fantasy league for Hot Wheels drag races. The blog I started, Redline Derby Racing, was intended to be little more than a way to chronicle my custom work, but now it stands as what I believe is the only online Hot Wheels racing league around, and it’s been a lot of fun to watch it grow. Not only am I playing with my Hot Wheels as a 30-something adult, but it’s serving a purpose by entertaining quite a few people. What started as my return to the world of Hot Wheels has become a full time hobby and I’ve found myself in the middle of a community of people that are looking for the same thing I was…simple, nostalgic fun. I always get funny looks when I tell people I run a web site dedicated to Hot Wheels racing, but I always shrug it off because I know that everyone collects something…and chances are it’s “stupid” too (and probably more expensive). We all geek out about something and I just happen to go nuts for Hot Wheels. It could be worse.

Some people…most people…see Hot Wheels cars as nothing more than a cheap, disposable toy. Something to keep their kid from crying in the store or something to stuff in that Christmas stocking at the last minute. But for kids like me, Hot Wheels made quite an impact and despite a phase where I thought I had outgrown the toy, I returned to the brand with renewed interest (and a wallet full of cash) to finally have the fun I couldn’t have when I was a kid. I’m not sure any other toy has stuck with me as long as Hot Wheels. I can’t think of any other toy that I was able to enjoy so much as a child but then also as an adult. It’s easy to look back and remember how much you loved some toys, but how many of those toys can you still enjoy like that today? Hot Wheels made an impact on me then and continues to do so in a very positive way, and for that, I must thank Elliot Handler and the other people at Mattel that created Hot Wheels and the other toys we all love so much. His name may not be well-known and might be forgotten, but his toys will live on forever and continue to make kids of all ages happy.

Brian is a freelance writer that blogs, tweets and races Hot Wheels weekly while also co-hosting live podcast.

Hallmark credits 16 individuals with “character development” in the credits of the 1985 Rainbow Brite movie, and out of that list two individuals appear to have been particularly critical to the line’s overall creation. Artist G. G. Santiago claims the lion’s share, stating she was the creator of the original Rainbow Brite collection. (She also created the My Little Kitchen Fairies figurines for Enesco). Another important name is Kora Oliver, who is listed in several places throughout the years of the line; not only in the credits for the 1985 movie but also as “Creative Consultant” on a second video from that year, and as the illustrator for the 2004 children’s book Rainbow Brite Saves Christmas.

Meanwhile, All in the Family and The Carol Burnett Show head writer Heywood “Woody” Kling wrote all of the formative episodes for the 1984 TV series: “Peril in the Pits”, “The Mighty Monstromurk Menace” and “The Beginning of Rainbowland”. He passed away shortly after completing these scripts, and later, his widow would file suit against the companies involved over creative credit and royalty issues. Rich Rudish was the character designer for the series, and directed a number of episodes, while the actual animation was done in Japan.

The original dolls were issued by Mattel in 1983 in several different sizes and styles. They’re still pretty affordable these days! All of the Color Kids were released as 11” dolls, which came with support “sprite” minidolls; most of these figures average about $25-55 in mint condition; considerably cheaper if loose and out of box.

Rarer are the 15/16” dolls, of which only four Color Kids (Rainbow, Patty O’ Green, Canary Yellow and Red Butler) were made. The cost nowadays is about the same as the 11-inchers, but they are said to be much harder to find. Four super-size 18” dolls, anywhere from $40-75 MIB, were made of Rainbow Brite, Patty O’Green, Shy Violet and Baby Brite (the Chibi-Usa of the RB line.) There are 12 soft and cuddly Sprite dolls too – 6 boys and 6 girls – and their prices are anywhere from $2-$50, depending on condition.

The horses (Starlite and Sunriser, suitable for crossover with Barbie figures) are actually much harder to find, and the late-series characters Moonglow and Tickled Pink are fairly difficult to find- don’t expect to locate them for anything less than $75, and that’s as loose figures.

The line has been recently (as of 2009) given a total overhaul – not only revamped and redesigned, but also simplified and streamlined by Hallmark and United Media. In the 80’s, there were seven unique Color Kids as well as Rainbow Brite and an army of Sprites – each representing each particular hue in the spectrum – and just one horse (Starlite), who was Rainbow Brite’s arrogant, prideful steed. The Color Kids, Sprites, and Rainbow protected Rainbow Land from the bumbling and histrionically evil Murky and Lurky, a pair of goofy evildoers from Rainbow Land’s ‘bad side of town’, the Pits. The original dolls were puffy and cute, but not very glamorous.

In the 2009 edition the line has been reduced to three figures, glammed up quite a bit and now more closely resembling the Bratz. The Color Kids are nowhere to be found, the Color Castle has been considerably redesigned, and Rainbow Brite, who Hallmark called a ‘toddler’ in the 1980’s version, is now considered to be anywhere from seven to ten- years-old. While she remains the guardian of all things color and rainbow related, relative newcomers Moonglow and Tickled Pink represent the night sky (moon) and dawn sky (sun). Each of the girls now has their own horse, which are each basically recolors of Starlite.

Except for Rainbow, all of the “new” characters appeared very briefly in or just after the release of Star Stealers, and never made a major impact in the original 80’s line, since they were introduced just as the original line was starting to peter out. It seems that movement and development on this version of the line has stopped. The fourth ‘Sky Power’ has still been left unnamed as of this writing in 2011, (speculation is that Stormy was meant to complete the group as the spirit of weather) and the official site has a sparse, under-populated feel.

Most of the reaction I found on the web to the new designs is profoundly negative. Hallmark has been left in the awkward position of having to deal with a frozen property. Nostalgia for the original has crippled the line from two sides: the 2004 re-release of the original dolls bombed because its look was outdated in the face of the modern market, and yet the same older collectors that refused to buy the re-releases also raged loudly and often at the redesign and refused to support it. Younger consumers simply had no connection to the line because they had no idea what it was – there was no support for it in other media except for a couple of honestly cheap-looking flash animations on the official site.

What a gloomy mess! 25 years later, is all that’s left of Rainbow Land to be just a lot of broken dreams? Don’t let it end this way, Hallmark!

“What if we can’t fix everything in time?” asked a nervous Twink. “We just have to,” answered Rainbow Brite. “Rainbow Land looks about as cheery as the Pits.”

Cassandra writes about media and randomness at her blog, cassandrapoe.com. She’s still looking for that magic key that turns any door into a gateway to Rainbow Land.

Want more on classic toys? Check these out:

-Vintage Robot Toys

-Spring-Loaded Serenade: Exploring Nerf

-Mr. Potato Head: Under the Tater Skin

As I’ve mentioned before, the Mattel, Inc. v. MGA Entertainment battle for custody over the line of Bratz dolls, which started in 2005, is now back in federal court this month- and weirder than ever. On January 18, arguments resumed for both sides in Orange County. But that’s just the start. When you actually dig into the case, the official court papers become more and more inexplicable- something reading more like a concoction from Monty Python or a madhouse spy novel than a respectable court of law.

How to sum this madness up in a way that everyone can follow? The gist of the case is this: Mattel employed a designer named Carter Bryant to work on some clothing designs for Barbie dolls. Around 2000, while he was working for Mattel, he was also whipping up a prototype doll on the side- the first prototype of what would eventually become the Bratz figure. Mattel claims that because the company employed him at the time, anything that he developed also belonged to the company, and produced a signed agreement to this effect. Open and shut, right?

In this corner: the Bratz

Not so fast, that’s only the start.

Bryant showed his designs for Bratz to Veronica Marlow, another freelance designer, in Mattel’s parking lot. A few months later Marlow was working for MGA and proved to be the connection point between Bryant and MGA. Pretty soon he was taking phone calls from MGA at his Mattel desk, and according to depositions, he used discarded Mattel doll parts to create the first prototype Bratz figure. He bought thongs and bikinis at Hot Topic to get ideas for dressing the dolls.

Mattel only found out what Bryant was up to because someone snitched- the company received an anonymous letter in 2002 tipping them off to Bryant’s activities. Mattel’s in-house response was to create a series of hyperbolic emails and memos within the company and to start investigating key figures within their own organization. PowerPoints and e-mails around this time claim “the house is on fire” and that fixing it would require “grenades to be launched.” Words like “fight fire with fire” and “Barbie genocide” were getting thrown around in memos, and that Barbie needed to become “aggressive, revolutionary and ruthless” to survive the 2004 market.

And in this corner: Barbie. Not shown: genocide.

Mattel accused a number of ex-employees who defected to MGA of RICO-level conspiracy and fraud, citing three executives at Mattel Mexico, the Canadian director of sales for Mattel Girls, and Ron Brawer, the SVP of the US division – of stealing confidential file on USB drives and then taking that information to their new employer. When Mattel attempted to sue Brawer for this action in 2004, the case was thrown out by Los Angeles Superior Court, even though it was established that Brawer made telephone calls to MGA within hours of Mattel company planning meetings and Mattel was having Brawer’s children videotaped. They also had MGA’s president, Julian Larian, and even the names of his children and synagogue, investigated. This came to light in motions filed in California in 2007. (According to the new trial lawyer for Mattel, this is all perfectly normal industry behavior, apparently.)

The original judge on the MGA case, Stephen Larson, ruled in favor of Mattel to the extreme – MGA were forbidden to do anything with the Bratz line and all rights reverted to Mattel. However, Judge Kozinski of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals – yes, that 9th – scathingly reversed this ruling in totality. And he did it while citing Twilight, True Blood, The Simpsons, Betty Boop, and anime in the published decision. I’m not even kidding about this.

I would buy the heck out of a Judge Kozinski figure.

So Mattel first got it all, then lost everything. Now the companies are back in court with the fireworks already flying. A bewildering exchange of arguments and hostilities have already been thrown with MGA claiming that Mattel has engaged in RICO conspiracies with its team of lawyers, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart and Sullivan. MGA is also defending itself against a separate lawsuit from its own prior defense team, O’Melveny and Myers, who are claiming the company owes them millions for their services. MGA countersued them for malpractice. And MGA’s current team, Orrick, Herrington and Sutcliffe, are trying to withdraw from the case – but the new overseeing judge, Judge Carter, won’t let them because it will disrupt trial schedules- and the 9th Circuit has affirmed this decision. MGA feels Orrick has insufficient trial experience, to which Mattel publicly scoffed that “It would be unprecedented to force a district court to continue a trial because a party suddenly decides, right before trial, that its longtime counsel (consisting of dozens of lawyers at a respected firm) isn’t good enough anymore.”

Mattel also intends to argue via forensics that the paper used by Bryant to do his original sketches was paper that came from a Mattel notebook in 1999. Seriously.

Mattel company notebook.

Meanwhile, Barbie (remember Barbie? This is an article about Barbie dolls.) and Ken’s “relationship” is suddenly in the media as the Ken doll has just had its 50th “birthday”. The media has jumped on this in all sorts of strange and bizarre ways, and is treating the fictional plastic toy couple as if they were real and subject to all the same forms of celebrity gossip as real, living flesh and blood people.

In a strange but arguably inspired social networking ad campaign, Mattel, which broke up the iconic toy couple two days before Valentine’s Day in 2004 – at the same time as Barbie was being told to become “aggressive and revolutionary” behind the scenes in those infamous memos – is now trying to get them back together again. Press releases have already hit on CNN, CNBC, and in disguised forms on Twitter, Facebook (of course Barbie and Ken have their own “official” Facebook pages) and YouTube. Elle Girl Magazine is promoting a Valentine’s Day giveaway of Ken dolls, which ends February 11. Mattel has also bought physical billboards, which should be appearing in Los Angeles, and possibly other major cities, in the next few weeks. They’ll say things like “Barbie, we may be plastic, but our love is real.”

Not shown: Back of shirt, which reads “For Sale.”

All of this to build up a new Ken figure, “Sweet Talkin’ Ken”, which can record up to five seconds of audio and then play it back at different pitches. He’s described as “the perfect boyfriend who says whatever you want him to say”, and wears a shirt that says “the perfect boyfriend” in ten languages. I can’t figure out if this is actually reverse sexism incarnate or just normal sexism taken to hilarious extremes.

Anyway, Amazon.com claims the figure is already discontinued. So much for the perfect man.

Cassandra writes about media and is developing some original SF works at cassandrapoe.com. She traded in Barbies for Transformers in 1986 and never looked back.

Want more articles on classic toys? Check these out:

-Guys and Dolls: A Male’s Retrospective on Barbie

-Forget-Me-Nots: Mutating Michelangelo

-The Glory of G.I. Joes: A Retrospective

On the Disney/Pixar front, we have two potentially huge releases that are going to impact the market in 2011- the first is the release of Pixar’s Cars 2, currently slated for a summer release in June. It’s coming double-packed with a new Toy Story short feature that director Lee Unkrich says will be the beginning of a potential series of new shorts. That’ll keep everything Toy Story-related fresh and hot for 2011, and if the rumors about the first short being Barbie and Ken-centric is true, Mattel is going to get another shot in the arm as well.

In July, Disney is also relaunching Winnie the Pooh with a new theatrical film release and a major tie–in campaign. Disney plans to connect a new consumer line for infants with the film.

Cars, Pooh and Toy Story are three of the six major lines of Disney merchandise (Mickey Mouse, the Disney Princesses and the Disney Fairies being the other three). Cars alone is worth $2 billion in annual sales- and that’s before we factor in that Disney now owns the entirety of Marvel’s vast array of character licenses. Marvel characters began appearing in Disney retail and online stores when Iron Man 2 came out – so you can bet they’ll run support for Thor (May 2011) and Captain America (July 2011), too.

Mattel is jumping on the Cars 2 action as well, but a lot of their energies may be tied up for the beginning of 2011 with the ongoing battle with MGA Entertainment over the ginourmously popular Bratz line. A federal decision in July threw out the entire previous court case- a suit which had cost both sides a whopping combined figure of about two billion dollars – and called for a retrial. The Bratz empire of dolls, cartoons, and peripheral items, a line in direct competition with Mattel’s Barbie for the pre-and-tween girl market, is now back in dispute. The winner takes away a merchandising goldmine estimated at a worth of 500 million dollars during peak sales. New custody battle proceedings begin January 11, 2011.

While Mattel fights over the Bratz, it will also be hooking up with Warner Brothers to promote the upcoming Green Lantern film, and some discussion is on the table about providing support for Universal’s Monster High live action musical.

Two dark-horse contenders for your dollars are also coming: a massive Voltron relaunch, with Mattel putting toy power behind World Entertainment Production’s new “Voltron Force” animated series, currently aiming to launch on Nicktoons in the summer of 2011, and a new wave of four figures based on DIC/Saban’s classic The Real Ghostbusters, with MEGO-style packaging and sculpts based on the animated series designs rather than the live-action characters. Sorry, no Slimer or Janine, though.

Hasbro will continue its incredibly successful association with Star Wars. Some figures already announced for the first two waves of 2011 are Han Solo and Luke Skywalker, two droids, a classic Storm Trooper and Clone Trooper, Clone Wars Obi-Wan Kenobi and Cad Bane. They’ve also announced a new The Force Unleashed character pack for Spring 2011. Word is that Star Wars Episode 1 will hit sometime in 2011 in a new 3D IMAX version, so Hasbro is holding some figures back from their packs to support this release as well.

Hasbro has inked a ten-year deal with the Sesame Workshop to produce toys and games based on the iconic children’s education series Sesame Street. (We hope they will be as cool as sadly defunct Palisades Toys’ Muppet figures.) Elmo, Big Bird, Cookie Monster and other classic favorite characters are set to begin appearing next year. The line is estimated to pop another $100-150 million dollars into Hasbro’s coffers. Who says it’s not easy (making) green?

Transformers is of course a perennial in the market and is currently in the midst of a massive reconstruction/unification effort as Hasbro is devoting itself for the next couple of years to operating the Transformers Prime “universe”. A new animated series launches on The Hub in February 2011, following the well-received Prime miniseries. Toys supporting both this series and the third live-action movie from Michael Bay, Dark of the Moon, are on the way and should keep the franchise white-hot throughout all of 2011.

G.I. Joe is undergoing a very similar revival/retooling, and figures are expected for the first three months of 2011 including Duke, Snake-Eyes and Storm Shadow, Low-Light, Destro, Skydive, and Shadow Tracker. There will also be a line in support of the new animated series, “G.I. Joe: Renegades”, beginning its run now and airing in 2011. There will also be a sequel to G. I. Joe’s live action film, but it’s currently projected for 2012.

Bandai hopes to bring back some of that 90’s flavor with a new wave of Power Rangers merch February in support of their new series, Power Rangers Samurai (Nicktoons and Nickelodeon). The original line was massive, crushing all competition beneath its multicolored feet in 1994; can it get back some of its previous momentum with a new approach?

And still more 80’s retro action: Bandai is also acting as the master licensor of toys for Thundercats, which returns to US airwaves in 2011 in a new series on Cartoon Network.

Pokemon Black and White arrives in the US translated in Spring 2011. While hardcore devotees of the game have probably already pirated and played it through entirely (it’s been out in Japan since September) and toy versions exist as spendy imports, there’s a hungry kid market that’s ready and waiting- it’d be a surprise if Jakks Pacific, current holder of the US toy license, doesn’t take advantage of the official US release to unveil official toys around the same time. Jakks Pacific has also partnered with Microsoft to prepare interactive plush animals for Microsoft’s “Kinectimals” and will release a standard non-scannable plushie line for the same in fall.

There’s no way to know for sure, of course, what’s going to hit and miss – but even if our crystal ball might be a little cracked and chipped, it doesn’t take a gypsy genius to predict that 2011 will be a great year for toys.

Want more toy news? Check these articles out:

-Easy Come, Easy Go: A Year in Review of Sony 2010

-No Freaking Way: A Duke Nukem Forever Preview

-Yet Another Pokemon Black & White Preview

She's still going strong, but what do I care? I'm a dude.

If you haven’t been paying attention, I’m a boy. Shocking, yes? I was born a boy, grew up a boy, and am currently still a boy. This is relevant because today I’m going to talk about Barbies. What could a boy possibly say about Barbies? Plenty, because while I grew up as a boy, all my friends were girls. Plus, Barbie is still incredibly popular these days, so it’s time for a follow-up article to the most famous girls’ toy from a boy’s perspective. Grab your pink convertible and let’s go for a ride.

The Exhaulted Backstory

The year is 1959 for those keeping track. No, not for my childhood, for Barbie’s. Barbara Millicent Roberts was created by Ruth Handler in an attempt to replicate a German doll named Bild Lilli. That’s right, Barbie may just be a replicant of her German ancestors. Would that make her any less successful? I seriously doubt it.

Anyway, Barbie came out way back when and held strong from her inception to yesterday (I haven’t checked today, but I assume she’s still Mattel’s star product), and eventually her life and mine intersected around the late 80’s and early 90’s. I was busy with my current love, Ninja Turtles, but I also had another love: girls. Girls were awesome and I was a smart child, so it was inevitable that I’d find the usefulness of Barbie.

My Childhood With Barbie

That was a pretty sweet house by the way. Totally inconvenient, but pretty sweet.

Sure enough, my friends that happened to be girls (not girlfriends, unfortunately) coincidentally enjoyed Barbie just as much as the next female. The standard models of Barbie came into play, such as Barbie in a bikini, Barbie in an elegant dress, and naked Barbie, a staple of every Barbie collection. Her sisters were in the mix, too, with Skipper, Stacie, and Krissy tagging along in the pink cars to the convenience stand that Barbie owned for some reason or wherever else my friends decided these dolls should go.

I found a nice way to compromise while playing, of course. I had a few G.I. Joes that were the same size as the Barbies, so I’d bring those along and they’d fight right in front of Barbie’s hotdog stand or whatever it was while she swooned. I assume my friends were making her swoon and that sound wasn’t just them getting bored. Even better, I had a Ninja Turtle the same size as well, so Michelangelo got in on the Barbie action a few times, fending off Joe and Ken at the same time.

By the way, I was never quite clear on where Barbie and Ken stood. I knew they were together, but then Mattel came out and said the two broke up in 2004 or something and then got back together in 2006, but I didn’t buy it. Their romance was never genuine, a fact I could see by the fake smiles they always had on when seen in public together. Ken was so lame to me even as a guy that I’d refuse to play as him, opting to be one of Barbie’s friends or sisters or whatever, as long as I wasn’t Ken.

I prefer this Ken, personally.

From a guy’s perspective, Barbie had a lot of cool stuff. I mean, she had dozens of playsets and accessory packs. While it didn’t really interest me to look at clothes and shoes, I could relate insomuch as G.I. Joes had accessory packs with guns and suits and stuff, so the two worlds weren’t really so different. I could definitely see the appeal of all the playsets as well. Barbie had a dream mansion with a real working elevator. None of my Ninja Turtle playsets had a real working anything, let alone an elevator.

My sister had the Barbie Dream Mansion, a super Christmas gift my parents got her one year that even got ME jazzed. Heck, that thing was huge. Plus, I guess I liked my sister. She had a few Barbies but nothing outrageous. Probably the coolest thing I remember seeing her do was gather all her Barbies in a circle, and when we’d asked her what they were doing she said they were having a Bible study. When we’d look back at the circle, our cat, Alex, had grabbed one of the Barbies by the hair and drug it under my sister’s bed where he proceeded to lick its face. Yes, he was the manliest man cat of all man kind.

That’s about as far as I’d like to remember Barbie at the moment, but I know for sure that when I have a daughter, I’ll be getting her a Barbie as soon as possible. But what about you kind folks reading out there? Do you have any good Barbie memories? Or do you prefer not to think about her? Let me know and leave a comment. I have to go play with Ninja Turtles in the meantime to rekindle my manliness. Please excuse me.

Simple Fun Without Limits

So what made and still make Hot Wheels so great? Not to sound too crass, but they’re extremely cheap. You can get a pack of 10 for under $15, and a lot of stores will sell them individually for 99 cents. Even better is the sheer amount of models to choose from. You and your friend could each own three-dozen cars and only have two that look identical. This means that every kid has a chance to have a unique set of cars best suited for his or her personality (sure, girls like Hot Wheels, too).

Sweet Glavin! This 10 set has a motorcycle?! I would have killed for a motorcycle Hot Wheels as a kid.

What did I have? I had a few cars that I absolutely loved, but my favorite for some reason was a beat up old Jeep that had a hood that could open. I had entire plotlines that involved this Jeep fighting other cars, just because it was my favorite and clearly the hero among my other cars. It had a posse of several other, “cooler” cars, but nothing could outclass my Jeep, not even the Mach 5 from Speed Racer or a car shaped like a dragon. Nope, the Jeep was my favorite.

Yeah, I'd be happy if I could race cars through a shark all day, too.

They also make great gifts for your dad.

I’m taking another day off video games to go into one of my favorite things from my childhood: Die-cast cars. The term can be applied to a lot of things, such as Hot Wheels and the like, but I actually won’t be bringing Hot Wheels into this since, well, that makes for an article in of itself sometime next week. Okay, not the classic thought of what makes a car a Hot Wheels car at least. I can’t lie, I’m talking about the most popular die-cast cars right now, so Hot Wheels are going to show up in some way or another.

Hot Wheels Showing Their Stuff

How are they showing up? The highest selling die-cast cars at the moment are Hot Wheels toys based off Disney and Pixar’s movie Cars. Y’all might be familiar with that movie, but if you’re not, the whole premise is centered around a car named Lightning McQueen that wants to be the DinoCo official car by winning all sorts of races. So pretty much the whole world is populated by cars. It’s actually a really good movie with Owen Wilson playing Lightning McQueen. The odd thing here is that the most popular die-cast car isn’t Lightning McQueen; it’s Mater, the junky tow truck voiced by Larry the Cable Guy. I…I don’t make these things up. I wouldn’t make that up if I could.

I guess I can't make fun. My favorite die-cast car was a beat up old jeep.

So what else is popular these days? Star Trek. That means the USS Enterprise is getting bought by the galaxyful in the form of a 1:50 scale model on a nifty little display stand. If I had one of those as a kid, I’d have done nothing else but run around my house flying it from the kitchen to the living room and beyond. I was never into Star Trek at any point of my life, but anything that could fly was considered awesome to me. I assume the same still holds true for kids everywhere.

Something a Bit More Classic

Thus far we’ve had die-cast toys based off talking cars and space ships. There’s an actual car in the die-cast model best sellers, right? You’re dang right there is. High up on the list is the Burago-made Lamborghini 1:18 scale model, met closely by the 1957 Chevy Corvette made by Yat Ming. Kids that want these models are just classy folk and know style. If a kid walks up to his grandpa and says he wants a 1957 Chevy Corvette die-cast model for his birthday, I guarantee it’ll make that man weep tears of joy. I know it’d have that effect on my grandpa at least, and he’s awesome.

This is the USS enterprise, not a 1957 Chevy Corvette. If you can't tell the difference, I've severely over-estimated this generation.

All of these cool-sounding die-cast models must cost a fortune, right? Wrong. Everything I’ve mentioned here is priced under $30, with some, like the Mater toys from Mattel, priced under $6. Kids wanting a die-cast model of something are well within modesty when they request such an item, so treat ‘em well. Stay tuned next week for a larger article on Hot Wheels. Better go out and stock up in preparation.

“What I said was, that it is in the interest of MGA employees and I believe it is in the interest of Mattel shareholders and Mattel employees for the two companies to come to a settlement and move on,” Larian said.

The rumor that MGA was prepared to shell out big bucks as a penalty for “stealing” the Bratz franchise from Mattel was passed around quickly on the toy news scene.  Thanks go to ToyNews for following up on the case and setting the record straight.

MGA still denies that Mattel has any right to the popular Bratz dolls.  We also feel that Mattel is probably crying over sour grapes in this case, as Bratz continue to trounce Barbie for sales, seven years in the making.

Bratz rocking the world

We’re on a roll for reporting Mattel’s various lawsuits.  The toy giant was awarded $100 million in its Bratz ownership suit against MGA Entertainment.  The hip fashion dolls were designed by Carter Bryant while he was under contract with Mattel.

Bryant is most famously known for his Barbie design work, escpecially the high-class Barbie series from the early 2000s known as Grand Entrance Barbie.

Barbie, still elegant after 50 years

When Carter left Mattel, he took his Bratz sketches with him.  And that’s what Mattel won the rights for, as well as the sizable damages from Carter’s new partner MGA.

Mattel’s beef in understandable.  Ever since Bratz came on the market in 2001, Barbie has been losing her place in little girl’s hearts around the world.  Meanwhile, the Bratz dolls were awarded the Toy Industry Association’s People’s Choice Toy of the Year Award, as well as the Family Fun’s Toy of the Year award.

Bratz may never give the mantle back to Barbie. The line of dolls and accessories have successful been spun into new music albums and a popular children’s show as well.

Some of the most popular toys are the Wayne Tech Mega Cape Accessory, a cape with a five foot wingspan that retracts into a back harness. The Shift Attack Sports Coupe comes with both Batman and Bruce Wayne figures, and the coupe turns into a missile-firing attack vehicle. And the Rapid Fire Utility Belt has a motorized blaster of foam missiles and also comes with a cape.

Collectors, however, are flocking to the Joker toys. Heath Leger’s renowned performance and untimely death have made the toys all the more appealing. The Japanese toy company Medicom has also released some hip designer vinyl toys.