Toy Studio

While they're great toys, racetracks are tough to assemble and take up too much floor space to leave set up. This year, Mattel took the modern toy-racing track up a level with its Hot Wheels Wall Tracks. Command Strips stick the track system securely to the wall, so cars can hit slopes, bumps and loops before riding down to the floor. The Starter Kit comes with an easy color-coding system for assembly, but the best part is the thought of not having to put it back together for each use. And if you're raising young James Cameron, Hot Wheels' new Video Racer will be a perfect Wall Tracks companion toy. A tiny camera embedded inside a standard-size Hot Wheels car can shoot up to 12 minutes of high-quality footage and be exported onto a computer and edited with Mattel's easy-to-use video software. They've even got ready-to-go music, scene-transition clips and special effects to give the video shorts a little something extra.