Hot Wheels launched their first Fast & Furious Spy Racers line about a year ago and they quickly became a hit with fans of the animated series — so much so that we are now on the third different Spy Racers release. Netflix just dropped Spy Racers: Sahara, the third season of the show, and these newest cars represent some of the rides used throughout the season.
Buy the Spy Racers Dune Buggy and Off-Road Ion Motors Thresher on eBay
If you’re not familiar with the Spy Racers animated series, it’s an action-packed cartoon based on the billion dollar Fast & Furious Franchise. As far as kid-centric animated series go, it’s pretty good. There is gobs of Fast & Furious inspired driving action, and of course, crime fighting from the cast of teenage Spy Racers.
The first series of the Hot Wheels Spy Racers line included the four main character vehicles: The Ion Motors Thresher (one of the best looking animated cars designed this century and has been released a whopping eight different times now in five variations), the Asanta Hotto, the Rally Baja Crawler, and Hyperfin. The second release was comprised of the four main cars (each sporting season two paint schemes), plus a new casting: the MaCalister Motors Superfin. Hot Wheels went even bigger with the third release as it has seven cars, including two new castings: the Off-Road Ion Motors Thresher and Dune Buggy.
Since I’ve already done articles on the four OG cars, their moving parts actions, and the Superfin, we’ll shift our attention on the two newcomers – starting with the Off-Road Thresher.
The Thresher belongs to Tony Toretto – the series’ main character – and received desert modifications for Sahara as the season takes place primarily on sand. This is a new Thresher body casting that includes a high-rise rear wing, sunroof outline cast into the roof, and a light bar molded into the roof and front windshield. This version of the Thresher is painted matte blue and has a mix of blue and purple digital camo scattered all over it, as well as a set of black stripes on the hood. The chassis has been updated and features a front push bar, larger side exit exhaust pipes, “lifted” axles, and large 5-spoke wheels with slick tires…not off-road tires like you’d think a desert race car would have. Despite the change in the body and chassis, the car retains the same moving-parts action from the previous releases.
The desert Thresher is quite a bit taller than the stock version and looks a lot more menacing — like a rally muscle car built for fighting crime. I love the camo paint and the aggressive new stance, but I wish they would have went with the beadlock wheels and knobby tires to complete the off-road look. Overall it’s a pretty solid version of the Thresher.
The new Dune Buggy is next level awesome. It’s moving part action is a working suspension — and it WORKS. The Buggy has one of the best articulating suspensions of any basic car since the Redline era. It bounces from side-to-side and has an awesome vertical rebound that has to been seen in person to believe — which is why I included an unboxing and “play” video to really show off the Buggy’s ability…it’s seriously good. As soon as I posted a sneak-peek of the working suspension on TikTok, the video racked up nearly 10,000 views and people were already discussing how they could modify the suspension and chassis to fit on other vehicles — so this might be one of the most popular Spy Racer releases yet!
Click to 8:40 in the video below to see a clip of the working suspension:
Even if you’re not a Spy Racers fan, the new Ion Motors Thresher and Dune Buggy are both excellent castings that have hours of play built in. These are two I hope show up in the Spy Racers line again – especially that Dune Buggy!
Buy the Spy Racers Dune Buggy and Off-Road Ion Motors Thresher on eBay