Review – Hot Wheels Fast Fortress

Line: Hot Wheels * Manufacturer: Mattel * Year: 2008 * Ages: 3+

“With 4 aircraft engines and ’40s-style fenders, this WWII bomber-on-wheels was made for hauling gas.”
— from the card back

David Hoffman’s 1996 book, Kid Stuff, includes a single page on Hot Wheels where the author writes:

“Hot Wheels often undergo as much R&D as cars turned out by Detroit.”

Well, this Fast Fortress toy car shows, I think, that you also need some experience in aircraft design if you’re gonna try to create one of the coolest Hot Wheels diecast toy cars that I’ve seen so far. When I spotted this thing on the pegs at a local Wal-Mart it was the “straw that broke the camel’s back” and opened the flood gates to grabbing a few of these impulse-priced toy cars. The Hot Wheels Tread Air toy may have been my first Hot Wheels review (review here), but it was this Fast Fortress that caused the current damage.

As you can see in the photos, this toy car’s design was brought together by someone insane enough to slap a WWII-era plane on a six-wheeled chassis. Completely ridiculous, amazingly awesome, and wicked beyond words, the Fast Fortress looks ready to scream down the highway, knocking out anything that gets in its way; being armed with three turrets means this thing could fit right in with your Jada Battle Machines (review here) . . . assuming you’re okay with mixing wild designs with relatively mundane designs.

Unfortunately, as cool as the design looks, the toy’s construction actually feels a little cheap when compared to the Tread Air. The Fast Fortress feels a little lighter, seems to have a little more plastic (the bright orange fenders feel plastic), and its paint problem (see below) is a bit more obvious than the paint problem on the Tread Air.

FAST!

The important thing about Hot Wheels, as any toy historian will tell you, is that these things were screaming fast when they were released. When Hot Wheels toys were released in the 1960s the Matchbox brand already had a strong hold on the die-cast toy car market. Well, Hot Wheels — with much better axle and wheel design than Matchbox — captured hearts by being so fast and even today, over 40 years after released, these cars continue to be fast. A few tests with the Fast Fortress shows me that this car’s just as much fun — and maybe even faster — than the toy cars I played with 30 years ago. In fact, this car’s even faster than the Tread Air (the one area, besides looks, where this car comes ahead of the Tread Air).

Paint Problem

Okay, I need to remind everyone that these cars are cheap. After tax this Hot Wheels Fast Fortress cost me $1.05. For that price I shouldn’t complain about a paint issue . . . but I will. The problem’s in the aircraft engines mounted on the sides of the car; the top of each engine is part of the metal cast while the bottom of each is part of the orange plastic fenders, and no paint was applied to the orange to make the engines appear to be a solid piece. Just like the tread problem with the Tread Air (review here, if you haven’t read about the paint problem on that car yet), the Fast Fortress could use just a few dabs of paint in specific areas to drastically improve the car’s appearance.

Closing Thoughts

This is currently my favorite Hot Wheels toy car design. The combination of 40s plane and car works beautifully and the car’s long, sleek form makes me think this would be a hell of a lot of fun to have parked in my driveway. Despite the light weight of the toy and the paint issues, which are admittedly minor, this car’s a much better deal than any other toy I’ve ever reviewed at battlegrip.com.

As I spend more time looking through the Hot Wheels toys on store pegs I realize that I need to track down a book or two about the toys. There’s a long, colorful history in this line and I’d like to learn more than what I’ve read in the few general toy books I own that include sections on Hot Wheels toy cars.

Philip Reed has some more Hot Wheels car reviews in the works, but he’s trying to space them out so that the site doesn’t turn into a toy car heaven. Of course, a Hot Wheels theme week may not be a bad idea . . .