Yes, this is one of the TV shows on these days…
There are few names in the car hobby as iconic as Hot Wheels. To the unwashed, they’re simply little toys for kids, but to many enthusiasts they were the beginning of a love affair with cars. And while you can get all kinds of cool Hot Wheels toys and even join the exclusive club, up until now we haven’t had a live-action TV show. The Hot Wheels Ultimate Challenge changes that.
Learn about a new Hot Wheels museum here.
The show, which debuted on May 30, has contestants who get to take a car from their past and transform it into a truly wild ride. The person who’s vehicle ultimately wins the competition will have their car immortalized as a Hot Wheel diecast.
Full disclosure: we haven’t watched the show. It airs on NBC, apparently on Tuesday nights, or at least that’s when it premiered. We have watched the trailer on YouTube, which is included, and it looks about as cheesy as we expected.
There are celebrity judges like Jay Leno and Terry Crews. The designs they preview in the trailer are absolutely ridiculous and like nothing you’d see at any car show (okay, maybe Hot Import Nights, but that doesn’t count). And everyone talks really loudly, like they’ve personally consume a few pots of coffee before the cameras were turned on.
Considering kids don’t watch broadcast television these days (and neither do we) it’s doubtful the Hot Wheels Ultimate Challenge will make gearheads out of any of them. But maybe they’ll watch it on NBC’s streaming service later?
At least the contestants are just average people, but yes the show is scripted just like every “reality” TV show out there, so don’t think it’s completely spontaneous. But we hope the actual competition is real as the stakes are, because who wouldn’t want to design a future Hot Wheels diecast car?
