Hot Wheels Car Culture, you might have heard about it or seen them in stores for MRP 399/- and wondered, “Why should I buy such small cars for so much, when I can get 3-4 cars at 100 or 120/- each?”. What is it that makes them so expensive? The thing is, for a normal guy or for a parent buying toys for their kids, it won’t make any sense. They are more of collector’s items than just “Toys”.
The Car Culture that we see now, have cars that come with Metal on Metal body & base, with rubber wheels and amazing bigger card art. That is what actually sets them apart from regular mainlines. The Car Culture series started in 2016, with the now much sought after set, “Japan Historics”. There were a few more set releases that year, like the Euro Style, Trucks & Track Day. Every year, new sets are released & as time goes by the value increases, which makes the sets that are hyped pretty expensive to get, like the “Japan Historics” & “Japan Historics 2”.
The truth is that, before the Car Culture series came into existence Hot Wheels still had cars that were all metal and with rubber wheels. The series that Car Culture replaced was the original Hot Wheels Entertainment series. The one collectors would still refer to as true “Retros”. They had amazing Card Art & the packaging itself was amazing. Some of the coolest & the most iconic cars were released in that set, like Scooby Doo’s Mystery Machine, James Bond’s Aston Martin DB5, Back to the Future Time Machine, among many others. Even among them, there will be one that stands out the most, and that title goes to the Need for Speed “Koenigsegg Agera R”. The main reason for that would be the fact that that casting was never used again till it made an appearance now in the Boulevard series.
With the Gulf Series in 2019, India finally started getting Car Cultures here, which actually made owning one of these, far less hurting on the pockets than getting them imported off eBay and other websites. Though various sets did get skipped, we should still be glad that we are getting them here, for much lesser than they might cost in the USA.