Fast & Furious - FAST STARS Hitting

 The next batch of Fast & Furious mixes has started to hit Malaysia. That means expect them here in a month or so... however... there are so many shipping delays right now so who knows how long this will take and if Mattel decides to "air mail" them in like other products they have done.

The cars in this mix:

1- Mitsubishi Eclipse 
We first saw this in the 2019 Original Fast set. The only real change to this version is the wheels. The car was designed by Mark Jones and is a collectors hit. The car is in the original "The Fast and the Furious" movie and was driven by Brian.

2- '92 Ford Mustang

The "Fox Body" mustang has always been a hit with collectors. It was designed by Jun Imai and the first time we saw it as a premium was in 2013 RLC Series 12 mix.  It was a Super Treasure Hunt in 2019. Expect this to be hoarded by many collectors. We will see this in the upcoming "F9 The Fast Saga" movie.

3- Jeep Grand Cherokee Trackhawk

This is a brand new casting and looks good. This is of course is the new Grand Cherokee that Jeep is offering that has over 700 horsepower! This will be seen in the delayed F9 movie.

4- Dodge Charger

This is also another car from the upcoming F9 movie. This is a brand new casting with the engine in the back. Looks great!

5- Lykan Hypersport

Wow is all we have to say. This is a brand new casting and we have been waiting a long time to see this as a Hot Wheel. It was in the Furious 7 movie and with that unforgettable scene where if flew out a building, twice! There were only 7 Lykan Hypersports made and the original price was $3.4 million. One was actually made for the Dubai Police department. Even this spec looks amazing!

Some History:

The Fast and Furious franchise has been a huge hit. For Mattel this has been a highly popular and collectable series.

The series originally started back in 2013 and these were Walmart exclusives. This first mix had 8 cars: the ’70 Dodge Charger R/T, the Toyota Supra (in the famous orange color), the Nissan Skyline GT-R R34 (with the famous Fast and Furious livery), the ’67 Mustang, the ’70 Chevelle SS, the 2009 Nissan GT-R, the ’08 Dodge Challenger SRT8 and the ’11 Dodge Charger R/T.

The 2013 mix was extremely successful and Hot Wheels released another in 2014. The 2014 mix had pretty much the same cars. The Chevelle SS was replaced with the Ford Torino and the 2009 Nissan GT-R was replaced with the 69 Charger Daytona.

The series has continued to be produced and is still currently in production.

In 2019, Hot Wheels released a premium set of 5 cars called “Fast Imports” known as Mix A with case code MHGBW75-956A. Just like the mainline versions, these because a tremendous hit and since then, we have seen Mixes A through K. Mix L will be the latest and could possibly be one of the best from our initial reactions from local collectors.

Based on eBay, the most popular continues to be Mix B, which was called “Original Fast” and featured 5 of the most iconic cars from the franchise.

Mattel continued to capitalize on the brand and in 2019 started to release 5 packs. Much of the cars in the 5 packs were just repackaged cars from the previous releases. More details on these to come in another post.

As popular (and profitable) these mixes has become, there have been a few complaints from collectors… The biggest being “I didn’t know that was a Fast & Furious car”.  Often the answer is “Well yes it was. Remember that one scene from the movie where so and so were racing. If you look when they turned the corner in the back left you will see this car”

Basically, Mattel has taken the position that if it appeared anywhere in the movie, even for a split second, then it was a Fast & Furious car. Which is in some ways good news to collectors because we can expect and endless assortment of Fast & Furious cars.

Now the next question, how long will this partnership and franchise last? We are sure that Mattel will not let this license end as it is extremely lucrative and brings and endless supply of cars to fill with various mixes. So keep bringing on the movies so that Mattel can keep making the cars.