HOT WHEELS DESIGNERS FACE DAILY ADVENTURES
No two days are the same at the Mattel design campus in El Segundo, Calif. “It's not all fun; sometimes there are too many meetings,” laughs Bryan Benedict, key principal designer of die-cast vehicles for Hot Wheels and Matchbox. “Definitely a lot of ideation, sketching and thinking about what's next. Also, there are a lot of partnerships; so much of what we do involves major collaborations.”
Benedict is now primarily focused on the lucrative Mattel Creations business, which has recently sparked high-profile collaborations with Jay Leno, Sean Wotherspoon and Daniel Arsham.
“We engage in a lot of that kind of stuff. So, I'm always meeting with various artists, celebrities or major brands that want to collaborate with us. We had a really cool Gucci collaboration a couple of years back that just exploded for us.”
Some of the hottest Mattel Creations releases have come under Benedict's stewardship — including the Hot Wheels x Gucci Seville; the Hot Wheels x Arsham Porsche; the Hot Wheels x Run The Jewels x Volcom '87 Buick Regal GNX; and the Hot Wheels x Nike x Paul George Circle Tracker.
Every year, Hot Wheels introduces 50 new castings and around 1,500 new products — meaning designers can often find themselves working on some 10 to 20 cars simultaneously.
“They're all due within the next whatever time frame. It's just so quick — boom, boom, boom, get it out. So when that spark of inspiration hits, OK, get it on paper.”
Fortunately for designers, the Hot Wheels die cast product line offers plenty of variety, with a mix of fantasy cars, OEM replications and multiple colourways or liveries split across three price tiers. There are the basic main line “dollar” cars that you can find almost anywhere; more premium five- to 10-dollar cars focused on car culture; and exclusive limited-run cars from RLC and Elite 64, which usually start around $20 or $30.
As the price rises, so does the level of detail, material quality and feature list.
“My goal is to make it as appealing, fun and authentic as possible. See, when we Hot-wheels-size things, if you scale a car down exactly to 1:64, it kind of looks boring, because all those details that we see at this larger scale get lost when it shrinks down,” Benedict explains.
“So, you want to enhance the defining features important to that car. Which is what makes our cars look better than a lot of the competition. Straight-up replication just doesn't look very good.”
After graduating with a degree in transportation design from the Art Center College of Design in 1994, Benedict spent 10 years in the automotive industry practising to become a Hot Wheels designer. As a kid growing up, he would write to Hot Wheels giving the company suggestions, “but all I got back was a legalese letter saying we cannot take any unsolicited ideas.”
Before joining Mattel in 2004, Benedict worked with OEMS including Honda, Mercedes-benz, Mitsubishi, Volvo, Ford, GM, Chrysler and a few others in China. “The biggest culture shock for me was, in the car world, I would work on one thing at a time. For months and months, you're like, noodling on a line, OK, move it up a couple of millimetres, move it down a couple of millimetres, and you're just tediously working on this design forever.
“I'm doing this part here, I'm doing this little part there. And I didn't have any control over where it goes from there. And sometimes by the time it would hit production, it's completely different from what I was working on.”
Part of the daily gig at Hot Wheels is dealing with the realities of project management. Once the final sketches are submitted, a series of Solidworks drawings and prototypes are developed, kicking off a drive toward the final product that zigzags between design and engineering.
“It's a lot of back and forth with the engineers. Their goals are to make things efficiently and easily. They just have a different set of standards than we have,” says Benedict.
Compared to vehicle design, Hot Wheels designers have more autonomy and direct control over the product from the sketchbook through final production.
“At some OEMS, engineering and design had a hostile relationship, whereas it's more symbiotic at Mattel. We have a great respect for the engineers, and we understand what they're trying to achieve and they understand what we're trying to achieve.”
Some projects are more straightforward than others. For example, Benedict modelled a basic Hot Wheels die cast after his personal '72 Corvette Stingray convertible. During the prototyping phase, he had access to a tangible full-sized vehicle for consultation. That's not possible when the car is conjured from pure imagination, but even with the added layer of complexity, it's better than having to worry about bumper-height restrictions.
“I develop the design, create a turnover package that goes to the engineers, and work directly with the engineers, going back and forth to make sure it's right,” he explains. “I ensure that everything I wanted, anything important to the design, stays.
“Sometimes there has to be a few tweaks here and there for production, manufacturability, or reliability, or safety. But I get that control to make sure those elements stay in so we don't compromise the design.”
For years Benedict has also been the design lead for the Monster Trucks line, and was a driving force behind Mattel reimagining characters from DC Comics, Star Wars, Marvel, Disney, Jurassic Park and Super Mario, among others, as Hot Wheels cars. Aside from die cast design, he also helped develop the Emmy-nominated and Gemini Award-winning Hot Wheels animated series Battle Force 5.
“At first, I was a little hesitant because I was like, `Am I going to miss the car world?' There's a certain prestige to being a car designer. But in all honesty, I feel like I'm just as much a part of the car industry now, if not more, than I ever was when I was actually in the car industry.
“We partner with all the OEMS, so we have those connections. We get the sneak peeks, we see everything that's coming out. I haven't missed it for a second.”