REDLINES

The Not So Complete Guide to Hot Wheel Castings

1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975

On these pages we list every casting made by Mattel in the Spectraflame, enamel, and two Flying Color years, 1968 - 1975. There are 200 castings you could buy off of the store pegs, get as a Shell gas promotion, or as part of an exciting track set.

Mattel manufactured cars both in the United States and Hong Kong during this time period. Some castings were made in each location, others only in one, or the other. In addition, exterior and interior colors, any stickers or decals, notable variations, and large detailed profile pictures of each casting are provided.

Why are these pages Not So Complete?

There is a great deal of variation in each casting, always more to know, so the approach taken here is to take a slice through all of the castings, focusing on a single aspect that can be documented in great (if not complete) detail. It started with buttons, expanded to interior colors, and now we try to tie that information together with exterior colors and stickers and decals. As time goes on we hope to take more slices through the castings, roof variations, hybrid castings, and body variations would be high on the list to work on next.

Note on exterior colors

The human eye can perceive between 10 million colors, give or take. That leaves a lot of room for interpretation on the color of these shiny little cars that needs to be addressed. I've tried to limit the reported colors to those most collectors would agree on as unique colors. There will be those that are disappointed not to see olive-gold or icy blue, but I don't believe Mattel ever intended for those to be other than gold or light blue. I'm not even sure that copper and brown were truly meant to be different colors, but I bow to tradition on that one. Is the Custom Volkswagen brown or copper, you'll have to check it's casting page.

Spectraflame Exterior Colors 1968 - 1972

Chrome Exterior Colors

Enamel Exterior Colors

Enamel Exterior Colors 1973

Note on interior colors

Collectors often talk about white (or light interiors), for example, but when talking about redlines, most aren't really white, they are ivory, or off-white. Similarly the middle color interior is often referred to as champagne, but the actual middle color of US and HK interiors are very different. In order to try to make some sense of the interior colors I'll refer to colors in the following ways.

Note on Production Dates

Production dates are based on the copyright date shown on carded examples of a casting. While this is not definitive it gives us a fairly accurate, and most importantly, a consistent, dating technique for production years.