BIG HYPE FOR HOT WHEELS.(News)

Byline: MARK VAUGHN

Mattel celebrates the 35th anniversary of its cool little cars with a hot new exhibit

]]]] They shut down two lanes of Wilshire Boulevard and one lane of Fairfax in Los Angeles right about rush hour, then made everybody in the vicinity wear passes around their necks. Even then they hassled people like this was a visit by the Pope, or at least the Oscars. What was it? Hype, of course, but done in a larger-than-corporate-ego way.

2003 is the 35th anniversary of Hot Wheels, and it's a big deal to a lot of people: to the Mattel corporate suits inside blabbing their corporate party lines; to the Petersen Automo-tive Museum, which will house the new Hot Wheels exhibit and no doubt collected a big, fat, tax-free check for the whole deal; to the hundreds of Hot Wheels faithful who sat in bleachers waiting all day for "celebrities'' to arrive and walk along the Hot Wheels-orange carpet; and to the thousands of Hot Wheels fans across the country and around the world, who carry their collections in purpose-made compartmentalized boxes and wait at toy stores for the next shipment of the little metal cars that roll.

The Hot Wheels Hall of Fame, the first permanent museum exhibition of Hot Wheels full-size and die-cast cars, is now open at the Petersen Museum. Being ...