‘Challenge Accepted’: The Design Secrets That Keep Hot Wheels Racing Past the Competition

Last summer, I lived out my 10-year-old self’s wildest dream. While writing the new book, Hot Wheels: The Creative Drive, I got to roam Mattel’s design studio, which is part Willy Wonka factory, part museum, part Frankenstein’s lab. One of the many brilliant people I met there is Ted Wu, SVP of Hot Wheels and Global Head of Vehicles and Building Sets at Mattel. In 23 years at the company, Ted has produced TV shows, run marketing around the globe and led design. Now he oversees a business that produces hundreds of millions of vehicles a year, and Hot Wheels is coming off eight straight record years. Ted joined me on How Success Happens to talk about his toy car career journey, and we’ve broken down five highlights to help fuel your personal success.

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You’re Not Just an Artist. You’re a Problem Solver.

Ted has bounced between creative and business roles, and he says both sides want the same thing: a great product. But a gorgeous idea that ignores business realities never sees the light of day. “We are artists, but we’re not just artists, we are designers,” he told me. “And design is solving a problem.” For Hot Wheels, that might mean shortening a cool tail fin so it survives a three-year-old’s grip, or cleverly finding a gap in the car’s shell so that a flashlight held up to it makes the headlights appear to glow.
Takeaway: Before you fall in love with an idea, write down the real-world limits it has to live within, and design for them from day one.

^{Photo credit: Mattel}

Failure Is Part of the Fun

The late, great track designer Paul Schmid built sets where not every car makes it through the loop, and he did it on purpose. Every vehicle has its own center of gravity, so kids have to tinker, adjust and try again. Ted says that’s the deeper lesson built into that orange track: “It’s about trying and failing, and understanding that failure helps you learn. You try again and eventually you succeed.”
Takeaway: Treat your next setback like a car flying off the track: adjust one angle and run it again.

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Authenticity Works on Every Audience

Hot Wheels has to delight both car-crazy kids and obsessive adult collectors. Ted’s secret is that the designers are real car people who think about where the driver sits and where the engine would go, even on a fantasy ride like the Donut Drifter. “At the root of it, I think that our authenticity has been the key,” he says. Kids feel the care, and adults catch the details, with “a little bit of ‘if you know, you know'” built in.
Takeaway: Build for your most knowledgeable customer, and everyone else will feel the difference.

Your “Rejects” Might Be Your Most Valuable Assets

The holy grail of Hot Wheels collecting is the pink rear-loading Beach Bomb, a VW bus prototype that never reached production. It was too skinny for the track boosters to grab, so designers moved the surfboards to the side. Collector Bruce Pascal bought one of the few pink originals for “somewhere around two hundred thousand dollars,” and Ted’s ballpark puts its value closer to a million today.
Takeaway: Save and document your prototypes, because the version you abandoned could become your best story.

Work Every Seat at the Table

Ted didn’t take a straight path to his position at Hot Wheels. He started in content, making TV shows and DVDs, spent a decade in marketing across brands and countries, and then moved into design before becoming general manager. He says seeing the business from all those angles made him a better leader: “Having more understanding of different groups and their points of view helps find a better solution.” He describes it as a “left brain, right brain” balance, caring about the creative and also making sure it works as a business.
Takeaway: Spend time learning how another department or role in your business actually works, so you can understand its pressures before you make your next big decision.

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Learn More

Keep up with Hot Wheels at hotwheels.com and on YouTube. Catch the Hot Wheels Legends Tour, an outrageous custom car show with 25+ stops worldwide.

Want to go deeper inside the design studio? Hot Wheels: The Creative Drive is available now wherever books are sold. I co-wrote it with Freddie Holmes, and it features a foreword by legendary designer Larry Wood. That’s the same Larry who put his real phone number on a toy tow truck and fielded calls from strangers for years. The book comes with an exclusive Hot Wheels car. Take Ted’s collector advice: “You gotta buy one to keep in the box and one to take out of the box.”

Keep learning on Entrepreneur.com:

• From Air Hogs to PAW Patrol: Ronnen Harary, cofounder of Spin Master, shares lessons from “No Experience Necessary,” a guide for 20-somethings starting out in business.
• The Joy of Constraints in Business: How setting guidelines for designing your product can actually unleash more creativity.
• 3 Ways to Use Authenticity to Build Customer Loyalty: Practical ways to turn authenticity into lasting customer loyalty.

About How Success Happens

Each episode of How Success Happens shares the inspiring, entertaining, and unexpected journeys that influential leaders in business, the arts, and sports traveled on their way to becoming household names. It’s a reminder that behind every big-time career, there is a person who persisted in the face of self-doubt, failure, and anything else that got thrown in their way.