I wasn’t a really big Hot Wheels fan, but in the 70s, everyone had Hot Wheels, so you had to go with the flow. Plus, my brothers both had them, so I got all their cars when they outgrew them. But without all the cool tracks and loops, Hot Wheels were pretty damn boring. Sizzlers were much more fun.

Sizzlers were, for all intents and purposes, Hot Wheels with working motors. Sizzlers could be charged up (using a device disguised as a gas pump, called a Juice Machine) and would run for about five minutes per charge. And you’d race them. Over and over and over. And, using the ubiquitous orange Hot Wheel tracks, you’d eventually start doing nuttier things, like seeing how far you could get them to jump, or torturing the cat by running three or four cars at him. Also, since the “gas pump” was hooked up to a battery, you could lick the end of it and get the same effect as licking the contacts of a 9V battery.

And, as with every toy, you eventually want to see what makes them tick, so the slower running Sizzlers were often dissected to see what parts they would yield. Sometimes, you could replace a few parts from another car and bring one back up to speed. Usually, though, you’d just have a pile of junk. The tires on Sizzlers were exchangeable and replaceable, if I recall.

For some reason, though, Sizzlers really never caught on. Though Mattel produced them for nearly a decade, kids just wanted the old Hot Wheels, instead. Too bad. I always thought that Sizzlers were superior.

We had a lot of Hot Wheels. I really only remember a few with any clarity: the Double Vision had cool windows that opened; the Porche 917. I know I had a whole case full of cars.

As with the SSPs, the Hot Wheels and Sizzlers became classroom toys. Previous to that, I had a habit of cutting the wheels off the cars to turn them into submarines, spaceships and the like: so all the cool looking Hot Wheels ended up being wheel-less. The Sizzlers were all dead by that time, their rechargeable batteries long since dead.

Some other Sizzler and Hot Wheels links:

• Sizzlerking’s Ultimate Sizzler Reference Site: just a terrific site. Some of the personal remembrances are great.
• Vintage Hot Wheels – Hotter Than Ever : an older article on finding Hot Wheels.
• Malcolm’s Diecast Showroom

This entry was posted on Friday, January 6th, 2006 at 6:21 pm and is filed under Toys. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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