Official Hot Wheels collection tracking app
Mattel has released on official Hot Wheels app for tracking your car collection. I think there's a big FINALLY that comes with this announcement but after spending only 10 minutes with it this morning, I have to say I'm kinda disappointed.
Check it out: creations.mattel.com/pages/hot-wheels-showcase
My initial underwhelming reaction is really due to the complete fire hose of data when you boot the app up. No rhyme or reason to anything you see. It's not the current year mainlines or collectors or anything, it's just "here's some cars" and then they expect you to sift & sort through their ridiculous filters.
And then there's complete inconsistency of photos. Some of them are just the car, some of the carded car, some of the case...it's just very difficult to parse and browse through.
And honestly, the big reason for my qualms is that THEY'RE MATTEL! They should have this figured out. An inventory app is not splitting atoms and having good, reliable photos should not be an issue either. I mean, it just feels like they found some app off the shelf and slapped a logo on it.
I haven't really checked yet but I'm also not 100% sure there's a matching web app for this either. If it's limited to my phone then that's a HUGE fail. Again, there's no reason this shouldn't be cross-device for ease of use.
But nonetheless, it's an official app and might be as good as we get from them. Give it a shot and share your thoughts.
Discussion
Possible hot takes, I've often said that if I need to rely on an app or Excel to track what I have, the collection is too unwieldy at that point. Also, I'm far from surprised at the hiccups and deficiencies raised in the original post; we're all unpaid beta testers on release these days, always bugs to iron out when a new app comes out. Rigourous testing costs MONEY, just push it to market and rely on brand goodwill. I have to LMAO a little at the badges & achievements available. Can't miss those opportunites to foment competition and clout among the user base (oops, a little GenX cynicism leaked out there) Great to know this is here, I believe I'll just keep the Fandom Wiki for now if I need specific info
- I deal with it all day at work too. It's exhausting, lol. And my complaints aren't even about functionality, more so just content and how they're managing it. But like you said, people will deal with it because of the brand...so why try harder? — redlinederby
- Yep, that feeling when your favourite pizza delivery forgets to SLICE the pizza first! Mattel could have used top grade tools to finish the project but chose the cheap set instead. A bit lazy and sad, like you said — Chris_Hood
I use the fandom wiki to look up cars, and there's also a site called Collect HW that you can track your collection on.
I've been playing with it some more, looking up some cars and such...and I think what bugs me the most is that this doesn't feel any better than any other inventory/tracking app out there. I mean, the HW wiki and other apps are all based on user contributions, thus you can excuse (and expect) a lot of varying photos, incomplete data, etc. But Mattel is the source!
They (should) have all the data and photos ready to go. How the app works is fine...whatever...my gripes aren't about the features and functionality. It's just...it feels lazy and that's a downer.
But as someone that's spent his whole career in the corporate world, I guess it's not shocking. But if their data governance and archiving is anything like my place, it's amazing that anything gets done as well as it does. I was just holding out hope that Mattel/HW was somehow better than my own faceless corporate overlords. Shame on me ;P
I just tried to give it a try and it is "not compatible with my device " LG Galaxy A11. So I'll just use the Collect HW suggested by Maniac Motorsports (Thanks MM!) Here I was looking forward to being disappointed and let down, oh well. Just for the record Fandom wiki is better on the Brave search engine. Much faster namely because it blocks around 1000 ads per page. Not kidding, try it
Interesting. ill have to check it out.