Hot Wheels were a buck then and they’re a buck now, and so it was the one thing I could kind of get my hands on.
Benedict attended Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, and landed a job at Honda straight away.
In the back of my mind, it was always like, Hot Wheels would be the ultimate car-design job because you just do wild, crazy stuff.
Seventeen years later, Benedict is the design director of Matchbox and Hot Wheels at Mattel, and surely then envy of his past self.
Since Mattel became a Star Wars licensee in 2014, Benedict has been able to combine two of his favorite fandoms. “I love Star Wars,” he says.
And for Mattel’s Comic-Con@Home 2021 exclusive, Benedict and his team wanted to do something different that would speak to the event specifically; a special Hot Wheels Character Cars release that pays tribute to both the history of Star Wars and comics.
To achieve this, they went all the way back to Marvel’s Star Wars #1, originally published on April 12, 1977 — over a month before the release of Star Wars: A New Hope.
That first issue of the Marvel Star Wars comics with green Darth on the cover, it’s so striking because you never see Darth that way.
“I picked up cues from both past cars and future styling, and even tapped in a little bit to Twin Mill, which is our iconic Hot Wheels car.
Vader’s helmet and mask form the car’s body, and have been adapted in clever ways: the lenses make up the dual windshield; the dome is the hood; the neck guard forms the rear; the grille of the mask, naturally, has become the car’s grille.
“But there are challenges when you’re interpreting a character and you want to make sure that it reads as a cool, authentic, legitimate car, and not too literal an interpretation of a character.
We have this Spectraflame finish that goes all the way back to the beginnings of Hot Wheels in 1968, when all of our cars had this really shimmery colorful finish.
And for those looking to see what this new green Vader car can do, they won’t be disappointed.
While Benedict has designed Hot Wheels cars of all types — including lots of Star Wars cars — this release seems to carry extra weight and importance to him.
I love tapping into these little things, and sometimes it’s things that are more subtle and things that only the superfans know about.
He loves Star Wars, ELO, and the New York Rangers, Jets, Yankees, and Knicks.