Hot Wheels Review: All About Hot Wheels

Hi hotwheelers… Sorry for the long absence at this blog. Today I want to share with you all my first Drag Bus. Got it on a trade all the way from Canada. Designed by Phil Riehlman. First appeared in the First Edition line in the year 1996. It was an instant hit. Over the years, this casting get the treatment of special editions, mail-ins, RLC/HWC and limited editions… not to mention the Employees Drag Bus which easily reach USD 300 on a normal day. Nonetheless, enjoy the picture.

The Classic Packard is the first Treasure Hunt released in year 2010. This beauty comes in blue tampo with a black roof top. And it’s very heavy because of it’s diecast metal body and base as well. This treasure hunt was first found since December 2009 in around Malaysia.

The difference between Super Trea$ure Hunt$ and Regular hunt is of course the wheels and the body paint. For the super hunt, it comes with rubber white wall tyre and blue disc. As for the body paint, the super hunt comes with blue lighter blue metallic paint.

For the regular Classic Packard treasure hunt, it was equipped with Y spoke wheels and normal blue color body paint.

Another thing worth to mention is start from year 2010, Mattel will quit using T-hunt as the title for treasure hunt series. Instead, Trea$ure Hunt$ marking just like US carded will be used in International carded as well.

Anyway, let’s the pictures talk for the rest.

Back to the day before I’m addicted to hot wheels, it’s meaningless to me. Just a piece of junk metal as I used to say it. However, thanks to Mr. “Solid Snake” who drag me into this endless pit of hot wheels collection. I was so into the ultimate casting that he ever mentioned to me, the Volkswagen “Drag Bus”. The diecast itself is an art, design by Phil Riehlman and produced from year 1996. There are so much I can talk about the Vw Drag Bus but the main point of this post is about my first ever hot wheels collection.

So here is it, lets the pictures show my first ever hot wheels, also my first drag bus.

~1997 Internet Promotion #1 Drag Bus~

The second drag bus right after the 1996 First Edition VW Drag Bus was announced. It’s the first batch of exclusive VW Drag Bus ever sold. It’s only available for purchase through Internet. Said to be around 10k of this been produced but without any official confirmation. The latest price for this beauty from the survey in Ebay.com is around $30-$40, and it’s quite rare to be seen from ebay. So if you haven’t got this in your collection, you might need to consider to get 1, no matter how, it’s the casting 13 years ago.

This Internet Promo#1 drag bus was not carded or inside any blister, instead it was sealed inside a Mattel HotWheels Baggie pack. So it’s very common to see the loose version of this drag bus because many will take it out from the plastic baggie pack.

Side View

From the side view, we can clearly see the tampo at the side. Written with the hotwheels web address: http://www.hotwheels.com which the purpose of announcing the official hotwheels web site and promote it.

Side View

Besides that, the tampo was paint in Gold color(some say bronze). It’s also filled with some black net tampo to emphasize the objective of this drag bus, which is to promo the hotwheels web site.

Back View

At the view behind the drag bus, we noticed that the backlight was painted with red color as well, this show how detailed hotwheels wanted it to be. And the pipe popping out from inner part was in ZAMAC.

Front View

As for the front view, we noticed that the head light was painted in silver color, and the signal light was in orange. Which is very nice and detailed. For the big VW logo in front, was outlined with Gold color with black as background. And this is a super match combination. The windshield was red tinted, and the interior was also in red.

Bottom View

The base is ZAMAC metal and written 1995 Mattel, VW BUS, made in China. The wheels of course was not Real Rider since it’s not common yet.

Top View

The top view of it was completed with black net filled with red dots.

The Wheels

About the wheels, it’s not Real Rider and the front wheel is the common 5 spoke wheel and the rear wheel is a big wheel without any spoke.

That’s all for the review of this beauty. Hope you guys enjoy it, please leave the comment if  you have any. Thanks for reading this, have a nice day.