YMMV / Hot Wheels

• Archive Panic: The series has been around since 1968, so it shouldn't come as a surprise that there are a lot of Hot Wheels cars and playsets out there. There are also several Animated Adaptations and Licensed Games based on the toyline.
• Broken Base:
  • Some of the unlicensed, Hot Wheels originals have garnered mixed reactions. While older, iconic ones like Twin Mill are usually safe, as are more realistically designed ones, some deride the more outlandish cars for being wacky and unrealistic, while others love them for that same reason.
  • Relating to that, a lot of the recent gimmick cars, like Zoom In or a majority of the "Ride-On" type of vehicles, who bear little resemblance to any sort of automobile, are either hated for looking nothing like a car and being a waste of a spot on the mainline, while others love them because of their neat special features.
• Complete Monster: Gelorum & Krytus. See those pages for details.
• Periphery Demographic: The toys are primarily aimed at children, but due to the collectible nature of the toy cars, there are plenty of adult fans who like to collect them as well. There's an annual Hot Wheels convention made specifically for adult collectors, which is usually held in or near California each year, and the 2010's redesign of the packaging has the actual car in picture instead of a nondescript blue-shaded sports car, to give it a more "collector's" feel.
• The Problem with Licensed Games: Critical reception towards the Hot Wheels games have been decidedly mixed.
• Retroactive Recognition: Albert Brooks got his start in acting as Mickey Barnes and Kip Chogi in the 1969 cartoon.
• The Scrappy: The mid-2000's are notorious among Hot Wheels collectors for the introduction of extreme body styles, like Torpedoes (thin bodies with large wheels on the outside) Tooned (stockier bodies, larger wheels, and exaggerated features, Blings (large wheels and exaggeratedly compressed interior), and Hardnoze (A huge front end that sloped down to a tiny, nearly flat rear). But among them all, Fatbax are some of the most despised models HW ever released. Scrunched up little bodies with massive, nearly road-roller like rear wheels, they were notorious for being unable to run on tracks, and are considered by most to be ugly. Fittingly, they've seen little to no re-releases, even compared to other gimmick body styles.