“The challenge is always to top the previous Garages”: Mattel’s Gabriel De La Torre on the Hot Wheels Ultimate T-Rex Garage Playset

Gabriel, it’s great to connect. We’re here to talk about the Hot Wheels Ultimate T-Rex Garage Playset. This was one of my NYTF highlights. What do those first design steps look like on a big item like this?
The team did a great job with this one. Design for our Hot Wheels Ultimate Garage starts with a ‘big idea’. Each of our Ultimate Garages has a unique play identity or big idea that makes it stand out from the rest – for this one it was ‘the biggest nemesis we’ve ever done for Hot Wheels City’. From there, we build on a great story to bring the idea to life through features and play.

There’s so much going on here… What are some of your favourite features?
All of our Hot Wheels Garages must include a ton of play value. It’s what our Hot Wheels kids expect from these big playsets, but we also include the special features.

One of the highlights for me has to be the big T-Rex race. Having our Hot Wheels vehicles race down a giant dinosaur is such a great adventure to play out. Letting kids control the T-Rex is also such a great story for the imagination.

There’s T-Rex elevator, the fast-paced track action, space for loads of cars… How do you gauge when to add elements? And when to stop and think ‘we’re done!’?
Ha! We first need to include some essential garage features in these sets. Features such as car storage, lots of car play zones and multi-levels in the set must be maintained, but, all of these play points should amplify vehicle play and the singular big idea.

There have been previous Ultimate Garage playsets. How did those inform what you did here?
With Hot Wheels, the challenge is always on to top the previous Garages. We push for innovation in these sets while still giving us core Hot Wheels play. We take learnings from our previous Garages – what resonated with kids, what haven’t we done yet – and build from there.

This is inspired by a moment coming up in Hot Wheels Let’s Race. What is that collaboration like between TV show and toy line? How do the two inform each other?
It’s a great collaboration between the design and Mattel’s content team. We share what works best for Hot Wheels toys and the content team lets us know what works best for show. We collaborate on how to best bring the big idea of the toy to life in the content while creating a compelling story for kids.

Creating our Ultimate Garages is always such a satisfying journey. It takes an entire team to help bring the design vision to life with lots of passion, thinking, and building, but always worth it when we see kids’ reactions to our sets.

Absolutely. Congrats again to you and the team – hope the launch goes well in the Fall.

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