Review – Hot Wheels Tread Air

Line: Hot Wheels * Manufacturer: Mattel * Year: 2009 * Ages: 3+

“Riding on a mono-tread with twin turbine engines and a single-seat cockpit, this high speed off-roader treads where none have trod before.”
— from the card back

I blame two things for my failure to continue resisting die-cast toy cars. First, I’ve gotta blame Jada and their Battle Machines series (reviewed here) for making me break down and buy some toy cars. Second, blame must fall squarely on the head of Matt Doughty (of Onell Design) for a long chat about the die-cast toys of the late 70s and early 80s. Jada got me to buy a few cars and then Matt got me looking closely at the Hot Wheels toys . . . which led directly to finding wacky cars like this Tread Air toy car.

At about $1/each, Hot Wheels can be a dangerous addiction. Each one is cheap, but so many designs hit the shelves that there are entire magazines devoted to these tiny toy cars. While many of the cars are just mainstream designs — which I don’t have much interest in — Hot Wheels is also known for creating some truly bizarre vehicles that have no real world counterparts. It’s these insane designs that really capture my attention (and, lately, the odd dollar bill or two).

The Tread Air is a perfect example of the type of Hot Wheels design that shows someone over at Mattel knows what I love. This combination jet and tank looks nothing like what’s on the road and everything like what I’d like to see someone build. This gold-colored monstrosity is completely ridiculous but there’s something about the combination of vehicle types that makes me love it. If I were to ever get into toy car design (wacky resin pieces don’t count) I’d try to design stuff half as cool as this thing.

Sculpt and Paint

The toy’s sculpt is so sharp and smooth that I assume it was machined — probably digitally designed and then printed with a 3d printer — but since I’ve never looked closely at toy car manufacturing I honestly have no clue how these are created today. A digital design makes the most sense, though, since that would make it easier to keep the pieces perfectly even and smooth. If the master for this was hand-sculpted then the artist deserves a raise; the details are flawless!

And the little amount of paint used on the toy is perfectly applied, making me again think that a machine was involved. The writing, definitely, was applied by a machine since a silkscreen process would be the only way to get such perfect lettering at such a tiny size. My only complaint with the toy’s paint has to be the mud splatters; I know this is meant to be an off-road machine but they could have at least washed it before sending the Tread Air off to toy shelves.

One Major Complaint

My only significant complaint with the Tread Air is with the choice to not make the vehicle’s tread color completely match. The tread is made out of two pieces — a black top part and a silver bottom part — and the toy’s look would have been seriously improved with some black paint on the silver tread section. As it is the design just looks weird; we’re to believe someone built a vehicle with a multi-colored tread? No way, Mattel. I call foul!

This problem could be solved with about ten minutes and some black paint, so I may just take a shot at fixing my car’s tread. I guess for $1 I can’t complain all that much but I hope Mattel spends the extra money to solve this problem on future runs of the toy.

Closing Thoughts

If you’ve been ignoring the Hot Wheels toys that are currently on the market then you’ve been missing some cool designs. I remember some neat Hot Wheels toy cars from when I was a kid but looking around today I can see that this is a golden age for diecast toy cars. The Tread Air is an excellent example of the creativity that Mattel is sinking into this line and I’m very happy to have spotted this little car on shelves.

Toy cars will never dominate my collection, but at $1/each I can see myself buying many more Hot Wheels cars in the future. Especially if Mattel keeps giving us unusual, insane car designs like this very neat work of art.

Philip Reed wants all of you to know that you must avoid buying any Hot Wheels toy cars. If you buy even one then you are DOOMED! You have been warned, people.