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New Star Wars Hot Wheels Are Like 'Wacky Racers' From A Galaxy Far, Far Away

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We don’t usually write about toy cars on these cyber-pages, but decided to take a whack at it on the occasion of today being "Force Friday," which is kind of like the first official day of Christmas shopping, but only for the plethora of products related to “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” that officially went on sale at midnight (full disclosure: we were fast asleep at the time).

And wouldn’t you know it, this morning comes a freshly downloaded press release from our friends at Mattel, promoting their hot new line of Star Wars-related Hot Wheels products. Seems they’ve teamed with ride-sharing company Uber to give patrons free rides around New York City today in specially themed Star Wars First Order Stormtrooper Dodge Charger sedans. Basically they’re all-white Chargers with black-painted wheels and blacked-out grilles and air dams, with angled side stripes that suggest a Stormtrooper’s helmet.

Unfortunately, to our knowledge this specific graphics is package is not an available option on the 2016 Charger, which is surprising, considering Hyundai previously offered the Tuscon in a special “Walking Dead” edition. On second thought, while it does give the car a more menacing look, the large “Hot Wheels” logo on the rear fenders would probably doom its owner to a life of bachelorhood. And, though it would tend to make a lousy Uber ride, wouldn’t a Dodge Viper make a more menacing-looking vehicular Stormtrooper? Or at least a Charger Hellcat and its hyperspace-launching 707-horsepower V8 engine?

And, not to get all nerdy about this, but aside perhaps from the hovercraft-like vehicle Luke Skywalker “drove” in the first, er, fourth movie, we don’t recall seeing any automobiles in the Star Wars universe (not counting comics, graphic novels, fan fiction, and whatever else we're too lazy to research).

So we decided to check out Mattel’s new Hot Wheels Star Wars line to see how the storm-trooping Charger’s look translates into a 1:64-scale rendition. Much to our dismay, rather than a customized real car, the toy “Stormtrooper Character Car” is more like a car that’s styled to look like a Stormtrooper. Though this and the other dozen models available are not as cutesy as are the characters in Disney’s Cars franchise, they tend to look a lot like the exaggerated contraptions from the 1960’s cartoon series "Wacky Races."

There's a Yoda-mobile with a stubby Fiat 500-like body and great big green ears rising from the rear fenders like tail fins. Meanwhile, R2-D2’s ride looks like one of those domed Fisher-Price toys toddlers push around, Chewbacca is morphed into a big hairy flatbed truck and C3-PO has been reengineered as a large gold-plated bus with giant rear wheels (Liberace’s intergalactic tour bus, perhaps?). All retail for $3.00 each.

Fortunately the product line also includes some nice looking micro-scale models of heavy hardware that we assume comes straight from the frames of The Force Awakens. This includes Han Solo’s Millennium Falcon starship, a First Order Special Forces Tie Fighter and Kylo Ren’s command shuttle (spoiler alert: I just looked it up– he’s the new bad guy).

Happy Force Day everyone. And may the cash be with you.

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