The New Hot Wheels Ferrari Collection Starts at $1.25! Here’s Why That’s a Big Deal

Usually whenever you see official Ferrari-branded anything, you know you’re going to pay a high price for it. That’s just the cost the brand carries. Not so with the new Hot Wheels Ferrari collection, the bulk of which goes on sale later this year. At launch there will be 10 pieces to choose from—but starting at a mere $1.25 suggested retail price. While this is fairly typical for Hot Wheels, it’s a big deal as a piece of Ferrari merchandise.

A quick, real-world anecdote: Walking through the Ferrari museum in Maranello to exit through the gift shop, you pass some small-scale die-cast Ferraris under a glass display case that are priced at a few hundred euros each. These aren’t meant for kids. So while liking cars is already an expensive hobby, lowering the cost of entry for young enthusiasts is how you open the passion to everyone. You never know how owning a little Ferrari die-cast might inspire someone.

Hot Wheels (and by extension its parent company, Mattel) isn’t the only one with official Ferrari licensing rights. May Cheong Group, which owns Maisto and Bburago, has Ferrari licensing deals, as well, and provides active sub-licenses to Tomy (Tomica) and Tarmac Works. But all these cars cost more than the Hot Wheels mainline singles, and Tarmac Works appears to only offer race car models starting at $25. After that, you just have your knockoffs. There haven’t been any attainable die-cast models for the masses. The Hot Wheels Ferrari collection changes that.

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Hot Wheels are sold in 400,000 stores globally, so the final price of the mainline cars will be at each retailer’s discretion, but they’re never more than a few dollars each. This adheres to the longstanding Hot Wheels philosophy of premium quality at an affordable price. If you’ve played with a Hot Wheels toy before, you know they’re not cheaply made.

“It’s an heirloom toy,” Ted Wu, global head of design, vehicles, and building sets at Hot Wheels, told MotorTrend. “A generational thing. People keep these for years, pass it down to their children.” He and his team challenge themselves to come up with clever ways to make sure the cars have strong design language and “look right” while keeping the price point down.

It’s working, because Hot Wheels buyers demonstrate something that doesn’t typically happen with other commodity brands: They remain loyal to the base or “starter” collection. Everywhere else, the hope is to get fans in with the entry-level product and graduate them to a higher-up model, like going from a 3 Series to a 5 Series.

“That never happens with Hot Wheels,” Roberto Stanichi, executive vice president of Hot Wheels and Head of Vehicles & Building Sets at Mattel, told MotorTrend. 

Wu added, “People move to the more expensive and elaborate versions of what we do, but they never leave the ‘main’ line or the singles behind. Even the people that collect the most expensive, $100 execution—they will still go to the store and find the cars they love at the $1.25 price point. That never changes.”

Hot Wheels could have easily priced its Ferrari collection higher than its other cars. That certainly wouldn’t have been atypical of a product bearing the Prancing Horse logo. But indeed, it didn’t. Instead, the mainline cars are priced alongside all the other similar Hot Wheels offerings so enthusiasts—young, old, and with or without deep pockets—can claim plenty of examples for themselves.