HW Experimotors | Tanknator

Hot Wheels has been around long enough to just focus on making real world diecast cars. Over the years they expand and create different types of diecast cars and in their mainline every year a theme is added or introduced. In the last eight years they have come up with diecast cars made out of everyday objects turned into cars. This also included cars that can be ridden by minifigures, and since their parent company Mattel acquired Canadian toy company Mega Bloks and re-branded it into Mega Construx they also produced cars for this range of toys namely the oddball vehicle The Tanknator, that definitely made true to its name.

There have been many depiction of the Party Wagon or generally known as ‘The This latest iteration of the Tanknator for 2021 mainline is under the “HW Experimotors” subtheme, which for most of its design features cars from everyday objects like a bottle opener (Carbonator), a tiny wrench (Tooligan), Money paperckip ( Fast Cash), and other related to this type of diecast cars.

But for the last two years Hot Wheels seems to shake up this sub-theme adding the Tanknator for this year’s sub-theme and it’s interesting that prior to its original debut year it was from another theme more about this tank’s design concept.

Mega Tank in Design

If you like Mega Construx (formerly Mega Bloks) sets and it’s licensed theme of sets from Call of Duty and Halo then you must be unaware that Hot Wheels also make diecast vehicles made for this brand and its competition namely, LEGO. The debut year of the Tanknator in 2016 was released under the “HW Ride-Ons” sub-theme, which feature other diecast vehicles that allow LEGO minifigures to ride them.

The Tanknator was part of this theme, but it wasn’t produced to specifically have a LEGO minifigure ride this vehicle instead, it was more for their sister brand Mega Construx in mind as this vehicle have a narrow seating inside the turret. There’s not even a seating position as you know tanks co-pilots half body exposed on top of a the gun turret and mostly they are driven by two people.

Futuristic One-Man Ride

But since the Tanknator is a small roving fast moving military vehicle it is a one-man driven tank and the dirver itself is sort of seated inside the turret. But the design was kind of limited for the Mega Construx figure to be well–positioned when its “seated” inside the gun turret and why LEGO minifigures won’t fit as it is not really designed for them this time more towards their sister brand.

In the last five years that it was released most of the color theme was inspired by the military. For 2021, Hot Wheels takes that tank and turned it into an urban SWAT vehicle with flat white upper body and black base plastic to associate it with the modern Police colours, while the upcoming secondary colour takes a radical take in orange. But this one is good enough to be an urban law enforcement vehicle.

Features:

• Rotating Plastic Turret
• Front and Rear Rolling Wheels
• Can Fit a Single Mega Construx Figure (Sold Separately)

Overall the Party Wagon is one of the sought after casting for 2020/2021 releases, but the most recent one is the favourite due to the correct use of wheel type and how the entire casting is enhanced to be close to the animation model. There’s not much to nitpick on this model other than the understanding of use with the plastic body instead of a metal version to cut cost and it still is a must have for any diecast collector.

“Tanknator” is numbered 1 of 10 under the HW Experimotors sub-series and overall 5 or 250 Hot Wheels cars released in 2021, which was acquired at Ollie & Co in Glorietta Mall for ₱ 119.75 Pesos (** $ 3.24 AUD | $ 2.50 USD). Hot Wheels is locally distributed by Richwell Global Inc in the Philippines.

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