Review – Hot Wheels Swamp Buggy

The Hot Wheels Swamp Buggy (Amazon.com search*) isn’t the newest of diecast toy cars on the shelves, but the warped and imaginative design makes it stand out as . . . well, I’m not quite certain what I should be calling the shape of the car’s body. Is it a submerged gator head? Because that’s what comes to mind every time I look at it.

Fat Tires

Those beefy tires on the Swamp Buggy really give the toy an off road look, and the little bit of bounce the car has when you drop it on its wheels means that either there’s a lot of heavy car here or Mattel skimped a bit on the suspension on this toy. I’m going with “man, that’s heavy” since the three layers — blue chassis, orange core, and metal shell — combined with the windshield and those fat tires really do add up to an impressively heavy car.

Love the Colors!

The weird shape of the Hot Wheels Swamp Buggy (Amazon.com search*) is clearly fun, but for me it is the colors that make the design pop. Out of all of the Swamp Buggy variants released to date (see southtexasdiecast.com) the only one I like more is the metallic green 2010 “Race World” design . . . now where can I find one of those at a decent price?

Closing Thoughts

Despite sales being down 8% in 2013 (news.mattel.com), the Hot Wheels brand is still a top line in boys toys, and at just $1 for this Swamp Buggy it’s really easy to see why the entire line is so successful. The Swamp Buggy may be the one car that forces me to buy another nice toy car display, but only because it’s so very neat that it needs to be on the shelf instead of lost in a drawer.

Great colors. Weird shape. Fat tires. All of these are good things, and all of these make the Swamp Buggy a very fun toy car.