HW City: Rescue | Propper Chopper

05.14.2018 – Hot Wheels brand has been around for sixty-five years and is still going strong for Mattel. It's one of the two iconic brands from which they’ve built their name as a diecast brand. The other, of course, was Barbie, which continues to evolve through modern times. With Hot Wheels, it's all about die-cast cars, but over the years, we've seen aircraft vehicles incorporated into their mainline to expand the variety for collectors to choose from. So far, there are selected fictionalized aircraft to make it to the mainline that have been around for decades, and one of them is the Propper Chopper.

The Propper Chopper is a fictional helicopter by Hot Wheels designer Larry Wood. It was introduced in 1990, and there have been many iterations of this aerial vehicle. So far, the casting for this vehicle has evolved through the years with the changes from the folding two-piece to propeller to a permanent one-piece with a longer tail.

These changes happened towards the end of 2014 and a new version for 2015, which probably cost Mattel to make these minor changes. It’s interesting to find out how they retain their die-cast parts, as some of their cars slightly have different ones. This new iteration has the “RSO Scout” and “Team 3” tampograph, though it's not a perfect copter with minor details remaining unpainted like the previous versions, it still has enough details to appreciate this edition.





In the real world, the Propper Chopper is probably based on some design aesthetics of the Bell Helicopters, like the 206B Jet Ranger III. But whatever Larry Wood had in mind to put the Propper Chopper together, it has been around long enough due to some collector interest in aerial vehicles.

I was never a fan of bright colors when it comes to Hot Wheels cars, but this one seemed to find its way to grow on you. The bright yellow and red colors seemed to match the blue skies when I had it taken in the backyard.





What I think of the Propper Chopper’s current casting is that there are improvements, namely a longer tail, but replacing the two-piece fold-out propeller with a permanent one-piece propeller diminishes its overall aesthetics, which was introduced in 1990. It is still a good-looking version of Hot Wheels take on a helicopter that is rarely appreciated by many.





Overall, it’s a good casting, but personally, I won’t collect all versions. Probably the last one that was released, having the two-piece folding propeller, to pair up with this one as a comparison, good enough to be in my collection, regardless of whether there are better color variants that came before or after this one. It’s good to have one casting that represents Hot Wheels’ attempt at producing an aerial vehicle, namely the Propper Chopper.