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They Tried to Take It Down...

In 2004, HotWheelsCollectors.com (HWC) began manufacturing the sELECTIONs™ series— exclusive Hot Wheels™ cars created through the votes of the site's premium-paying Red Line Club™ (RLC) members.

Within the RLC™ Forums, a series of polls were conducted four times each year. (In 2010, this was reduced to twice per year.) In each series, voters determined the model, color, and wheels of the next sELECTIONs™ car. When the final round of voting was concluded, the winning car was offered only to RLC™ members, and only manufactured in quantities to match the number of orders.

There were many RLC™ members who honored the heritage of Mattel's original 1968-style redline wheels, complete with "torsion-spring" bent-axle suspension. These "old-school" members admired Hot Wheels' "Neo-Classics" reproduction of those 1968-style wheelsets. To their dismay, the majority of votes went to cheaper, straight-axled, rubberlike Real Riders® wheels — the same wheels that are put on cars in Mattel's retail lines at a quarter of the cost. And more and more frequently, the color voted in was some form of blue.

In 2007, a tie in one of the polls resulted in five sELECTIONs™ cars being produced. Four out of the five were blue, and every one was given Real Riders® wheels.

In 2008, sELECTIONs™ voting resulted in the eighth Real Riders® car in a row. The Blue Real Riders Club was created in response.

The Blue Real Riders® Club site began as a single Photoshopped image, intended to criticize the RLC® members who consistently voted in favor of the lesser, rubber-tire cars. As April Fool's Day was pending, I created more images and built the concept into a five-page spoof "website".

Red Line Club™ members are forbidden to post links to offsite URLs, but I requested and was given permission to link to it by a senior member of Mattel's Boys' New Media team, who said, "You won't get any interruption from me. If any of the mods or admins say anything to you, point them my direction and I'll chat with them."

Pointing them his direction didn't work. On April 1st I started a discussion thread on the RLC™ exclusive forum with a simple link. Although I showed him my "permission slip", the HWC site admin strongly suggested I pull the plug, claiming fear of his superiors and a humorless legal department. Before the end of the day, the message thread got sixty positive Replies, my site got 1100 page loads, and the link was forcibly yanked.

They closed my entrance ramp, but the Information Superhighway was still open and inviting. And I found it was more fun working on my site than playing on theirs. So I continued to build BlueRealRiders.com.