id 20-08 Darth Vader

Darth Vader - id (Apple Store Exclusive)

The dark lord theme playing in the background, out of the fog comes the shadowy presence of he, the sith lord, Darth Vader. And with that scene in your mind, out rolls the Darth Vader id car the heavy breathing from the exhaust and its presence. There is a regular line casting in the Star Wars series of character cars but this version is designed to impress. There is also a real life version, a running functioning Hot Wheels Darth Vader! See the link below for the Jay Leno Garage episode featuring the real car (it is approx 22 minutes long)!

The id version is the same tooling as the character cars Hot Wheels Darth Vader casting. The paint on this version is incredibly beautiful. The depth of the gloss black is sinister and the smoothness of the paint surface on the car I obtained is like an alien monolith. There are so many little details to this casting that I may need another page. One really cool feature of the real car (that is too small to recreate here) is the area of the mask on the front of the car. Where the darker stripes are on the real car, there are Hot Wheels logos cutout for air inlets! There is also a coveted prize in the interior - watch the linked video to see what it is!

Back to the casting, the base is clear but Mattel has mounted a red piece midway so when you look at the car from the side, the red shines through and looks like Darth Vaders light saber (clearly visible in the picture below). A clever additional note is the side pipe area also serves as the light saber handle. The wheels are the only release to not say HWid on them, instead one side reads “Darkside” and the other side reads “Sith Series”….love this detail. From above, the infamous helmet is well detailed and is easily recognizable.

Another notable detail is the packaging usually tells you how many are in the sub series, this one is labeled as Galactic Empire Series and does not have a 1 of number, indicating that it will be the only one in series one. The dark side needs no other. It is noted on the Apple store website as Apple store only but I have heard rumors of them showing up in Target stores. Ooops!? No matter how you get one, this is sure to shine in any collection.

Time to test it out in the app. As of this writing, this car does not even show up in the list of id cars so I am very curious what happens.
**Editorial note** I was able to scan Darth Vader into the app. The car comes in at full power and is a blast to drive. The dark lord wins every race! 

Thank you,

Collector Quentin

I own the actual diecast pictured in this post. However, all packaging artwork, Mattel or Hot Wheels logos, paint descriptions and wheel descriptions are copyrights of the Mattel toy company.

Click here to watch Jay Leno Garage review the Hot Wheels Darth Vader!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMoGFbhLgJw