I really don’t remember how many Hot Wheels cars I had when I was a kid. Suffice to say I could have filled numerous shoeboxes. Unfortunately, most of those cars perished at the hands of myself and my friends by being buried in my sandbox, blown up with various explosives, flattened with bricks, or just out right burnt. (We were destructive, what can I say). But in recent years I’ve been buying and collecting Hot Wheels all over again - maybe out of guilt.
Another reason I’ve been collecting them is they’re cheap! I can’t find any other toy that costs less than a dollar. C’mon! A dollar!! Every time I go into Target or Wal-mart I must stop by the car aisle to see what they have. My favorites are classic muscle cars. I have a pretty good collection of Cooper Mini’s and a few 60s-ish European formula race cars. And, of course, the requisite Goodyear blimp and forklift.
My collection has grown quite nicely and I figured it was time to get organized with them. So I surfed on over to HotWheelsCollectors.com, Mattel’s official site for Hot Wheels collectors - which is different that HotWheels.com, which is more targeted towards to kids an non-car Hot Wheels merchandise. Much to my disappointment, the Hot Wheels database and features are rather unfulfilling.
Thankfully there is a search, so I searched for “charger” so I could add all the Dodge Chargers I have to my collection. The site lets you keep track of which cars you have and which cars you want.
The results for “charger” were a bummer because there very few pictures. After doing more searches for other cars the results were the same. There was a mix of records with car photos and those without. Each car record has a profile that describes the car, but if you want to make the collection matching fun and engaging, you need to have those pictures. Especially for the current release of cars, you would think the photo taking would be automated some how. There are cars from the 2005 and 2006 editions without pictures.
On the results page next to each match is a checkbox so you can either add the car to your Want or Have list. This great but the process should be one step. Instead, you check the boxes then scroll to the bottom of the page and click a separate “Update my 
checklist” button. What’s worse is that when you click the button it takes you to your collection page, making you have to click the Back button to continue through your search results. The action of adding the car to a list should happen right when you click the checkbox. No need for the extra save button.
When you click on a car in the results list, the car’s profile page is loaded. The profile shows the enlarged photo (if there is one) and also the car’s detailed information, like wheel type, color, year, model, etc. The profile page suffers from the same woes as the search page in terms of adding the car to your collection.
There is also a “View variations” button on all profile pages. All the cars I viewed and clicked this button had no variations, which isn’t a problem except that I had to click the button to find that out. The profile page should be smart enough to know if the car has variations and should tell you how many variations there may be. If that’s zero, then it’s zero - otherwise, show the quantity and provide a link.
Another profile problem is the wheel type. Every wheel type has a code, but the page doesn’t have any sort of key for that code. Sure, if there is a picture of your car it doesn’t matter - but what if there isn’t a picture? Telling me the wheel type is “LW” means nothing without a picture. Obviously the codes are standard, so on the profile page there should be a little picture of the wheel type based on code - even if a car photo isn’t available. You don’t need the full car photo to know the wheel type.
Besides those improvements, I feel the profile page doesn’t have to be a page at all. When you click on the search result, why not have a layer appear? It will save the page load and look a lot better. You could also have a Next and Previous link on the profile so you could continue through your results from the profile pages instead of having to go back and fourth between your search results page.
Lastly, considering this site is targeted towards collectors, why not have buttons that help you find and collect the cars!? Have a button that links to eBay so collectors can find the cars they don’t have yet. Maybe even a comment section per car so collectors can discuss the car.
There are some other issues I have with the Hot Wheels site, but for someone who isn’t a total die hard collector like me and just wants to have a neat place to keep track of their cars, the site is very cumbersome and frustrating. It would be easy to fix the usability and experience problems with their site - especially with all the fancy things you can do with the web today.
Oh yeah, and why not open up the Hot Wheels database to collectors in the form of a web service? Make a simple API that people can use to build sites around the Hot Wheels products, like Amazon or Google. Then instead of complaining about how crappy Hot Wheels’ site is, I could make my own little collection page to use and show off my cars.
You listening Hot Wheels? Make your web site better so collecting can quick and easy and fun.
I don´t know if after 2 years, if you had discovered a way to have a shared hot wheels car list published in the internet… I´m also looking for it… if you have any tip, please foward it to me ;)
You know Mario, that’s a good idea - a collective, shared Hot Wheels list. I like that.
Might not be too hard to build either. Something where you can input your cars, or choose from a list of cars that others have entered. Hmmm…especially if the official Hot Wheels sight is lacking.