I’ve been surprised to hear a few of you complaining that the Fast & Furious Premium set is a little played out. What is more surprising is that I am going to be the one countering, especially considering my opinion on Fast & Furious.
I don’t hate the Fast & Furious movies. I actually have enjoyed a few, but for all the wrong reasons. They are goofy, over-the-top, and absurd. That is actually a good way to spend a couple of hours. But I definitely don’t care enough about them to get excited about a specific line of Fast & Furious toys, like Star Wars figures or whatever.
And even as a car guy, the movies don’t do much for me. Obviously there are a ton of cool cars, and it has been cool to see a mainstream audience exposed to some cool elements of car culture. But when the movies were actually about cars – they aren’t anymore – the cars featured were not necessarily my cup of tea.
Now the movies are essentially superhero heist movies, and cool cars do show up, which is nice, not enough to supersede what I think about the movies.
But there is one huge reason I am happy they exist. Because the brand is so valuable, and because it is such an important relationship that Mattel has, they are putting a lot into Fast & Furious. That means replicas of the cars from the movies, whether featured prominently like Brian’s R34, or obscurely, like the the R32 that Dom essentially walks by once.
Mattel is justified no matter what the car, and even if I don’t like the deco on some of the releases, like the S14 in Original Fast, at least we now have the S14. Same with the Jetta, and cool new Chevelle, and now, an amazing group of Off-Road vehicles.
The new Fast Premium Off-Road set is fantastic. I can’t remember when most of these vehicles showed up in the movies, but I do know that Hot Wheels just released in incredibly cool matte black Defender 110 and olive green G-Wagon. The Defender is sitting next to me, with no reference to the movies out of the package, and it is one of my favorite releases of the year.
So by golly Hot Wheels needs to keep pushing the Fast & Furious, not because I want more Fast & Furious shit, but because it leads to some fantastic Hot Wheels models. The more the merrier.
I think this opinion subconsciously shows up in my approach to this set. Four new castings, plus the Subaru in a very FnF-centric deco. I totally forgot to take a photo of the Subie. The other models had all my attention.
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