February 29th, 2024 
Jackson Murphy 
Rob David serves as executive producer, and Melanie Shannon is the co-creator, of Mattel’s new animated family series Hot Wheels Let’s Race. It premieres this Monday March 4th on Netflix. You’ve got the green light to learn what David and Shannon have to say about this super-charged show. (This Animation Scoop Q&A was edited for length and clarity.)
Jackson Murphy: Rob, between this and the new “Masters of the Universe” show that we talked about recently, Mattel and animation and Netflix — this relationship is really going strong.
Rob David: We are having a good year. We love our partners at Netflix. We’ve got a lot of stories to tell and we’re just completely over the moon, excited about this show coming out.
JM: Melanie, tell me about creating the atmosphere and the vibe for “Hot Wheels Let’s Race”. A bunch of kids go to Hot Wheels camp in Hot Wheels City. It’s the adventure and the racing escapades of a lifetime.
Melanie Shannon: I love that description of it. Yeah, we were just so excited. Rob and I both really love Hot Wheels. We’ve got great memories, each of us, I think, of playing with Hot Wheels as kids, and we were thrilled to kick off a show [to] capture some of that excitement and love of the brand for kids. And I think one of the main things that we really wanted to do was capture the feeling of actually what it feels like to play with the cars. We wanted kids to feel like they’re really driving those cars and not just one car for each kid. We wanted it to feel like there’s a whole bucket of cars that the kids can choose from. They can drive any car that they want. And I think that was kind of where we started off.
RD: Oh, yeah, absolutely. We really wanted to take that love of the Hot Wheels toy and experience but then make a narrative based on it — a story that could really encapsulate the kind of breadth of the entire Hot Wheels universe. There have been animated series and specials before Hot Wheels, and they’ve been great, but they’ve usually tended to focus on a very specific part of the brand. Our hope and our dream was to crack a story that could really represent the entire Hot Wheels universe. And that’s why we set it in Hot Wheels City, the city that never breaks, at the ultimate garage, which is kind of the beating heart or engine (if you want to use the correct metaphor) of the Hot Wheels universe. We wanted to focus on these kids who were going on this 10 week camp and learning what it means to be a Hot Wheels racer. And to Melanie’s point, we were really trying to get at that feeling of having a bucket full of Hot Wheels cars and picking the right car for the right event and making a kid at home feel like, “Holy moly — they’re gripping the wheel of a Hot Wheels car. Let’s go!”
JM: The Ultimate Garage is awesome. And you’re so right about choosing the right cards for the right moments. The kids have to do that in the show, but you two also have to do that when deciding on the storylines for the specific episodes. Was that a challenging process?
RD: Yeah, that was a challenging process. One thing was really important to Melanie and I (and then in working with Jordan Gershwitz, who was our story editor) as we were breaking out the stories for the season is making sure that even though it’s a character driven story, it’s really about the cars. It’s about the love of the cars, the driving of the cars. It’s Hot Wheels. We want to deliver on what people are here for… what’s putting the butts in the seats. We wanted the cars themselves to be an expression of whatever storyline or issue each kid was going through. And then having that pay off with what we call the “Go Hot Wheels” moment, which is the end of every episode where the kid has some realization, some personal realization, about whatever issue they’re facing. It comes together on what special power they should use from their car, and then they go for the win with that.
MS: There are so many amazing Hot Wheels cars to choose from out in the real world. And figuring out which ones went in the show was a problem of wealth. So many riches and which ones to choose. We worked a lot with our cross functional partners here at the company, people on the brand who really know it. And they gave us some recommendations and then we worked and chose ones that we thought would work best for story and look really cool on screen.
Rob David and Melanie Shannon
RD: And that goes for a range. We’ve got cool cars, like the Rocket Fire, which obviously gives you the speed, but we wanted to throw in cars like the Taco Car. We’ve got a car in Hot Wheels that’s based on a toilet.
MS: The Gotta Go.
RD: And sometimes the Gotta Go is the right car for the right challenge. And that’s the joy of it. What makes Hot Wheels special are really two things. One is that there are other car shows or car properties out there, but what makes Hot Wheels Hot Wheels is it takes real authentic car design… car lovers / real people in car culture respect Hot Wheels because they know that the people who design these cars really understand cars. It’s got authentic car design, but then at the same time it’s mashed up against over the top, extraordinary things, like a thousand foot tall loop de loops or giant cobras or a toilet Gotta Go car. You name it and that’s part of the joy. And the other thing that’s so important speaks to both the cars and the characters — the central theme of the show and of the whole brand — the challenger spirit. That part of everybody that learns from their mistakes and pushes past all limitations to achieve the impossible.
JM: And the track is unbelievable, too. Melanie, how was it making that larger than life, making it feel epic for kids and adults watching this on Netflix?
MS: That was so important to us. One of the things we know about Hot Wheels is that even though it’s usually young kids playing with actual tracks and playsets. When they get older, for a lot of toys and brands, kids get older and they think, “Well, that’s a baby thing now. I don’t want that anymore.” They never grow out of Hot Wheels. It’s always cool through adulthood. And it is always cool. It was so important to us to make sure that the cars and the racing in the show felt seriously cool, even for us.
RD: The track builder — the aspiration, the joy of being able to punch that button and create the ultimate challenge instantly, it’s kind of magic for a kid.
MS: One of the things I think that really, really helped us out in this area is we brought on Mike Roberts as our creative producer. Mike lives and breathes cars.
RD: And he is such a visual storyteller. We knew we wanted this show to make a kid feel like they were on the tracks. We take a lot from video games too. The way kids experience it, where they’re on the tracks. We wanted the camera to be embedded with the cars. We want it to feel insane and over the top. And so we love Mike and we know Mike is such a great board artist and director and someone who ;oves cars. We were like, “Mike, get us on that road and take us across those jumps.” And he did. So we’re excited.
JM: I have to ask the both of you about your dream Hot Wheels car.
MS: I feel like we’ve been doing this in the show, it’s hard not to pull one of the cars from the show. And that GT Scorcher, it’s got this special power that just sends it sailing through the air that’s so fantastic. A GT Scorcher… and all this super coolness and speed and it spits out a warm cookie and hot cup of coffee every morning. That’s my dream car.
RD: And I’m just going to keep it really simple. I want flying cars. The future has promised us flying cars — every single science fiction thing that I’ve ever grown up has promised by flying cars. We’ve passed into the 2000s. We’re already in 2024. As soon as we have a flying car, then we’ll know we have truly arrived in the future. So come on, Hot Wheels. Let’s bring it.
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