Hot Wheels has excelled at merging the real and virtual worlds for the past few years, but a lot of that has really been focused on the driving experience. Specifically, how to make it more like a video game with toys like Hot Wheels AI, Mindracers and Augmoto. This year the brand is finally giving budding gear heads some love with its new TechMods set, an app-controlled vehicle that you build yourself and then control with your phone. It's not the same as tinkering under a hood, but it is actually fun to put together. The kit comes with a plastic chassis, which consists of a battery, a motor and four wheels, two of which can be steered. There's a plastic frame that snaps onto the top of it, with the rest of the vehicle's body made up of pre-cut plastic pieces that you punch out of several sheets and fold according to the in-app instructions.

I wasn't a major aficionado of Hot Wheels growing up, however growing up I still remember asking dad to get me one. It was small and I wasn't particularly wild about it, however it was one more car to play with. A couple of years back, the startup Anki inspired the crowd at an Apple event by flaunting some toy race cars with AI capacity. One wouldn't expect the toy-car monster Hot Wheels to kick back and let a little startup take its turf. Model cars and track dashing are the bread and spread of Hot Wheels, yet they may look somewhat long in the tooth contrasted with conspicuous console amusements like Need for Speed or CTR.

I'm infamously bad at games like Mario Kart (just ask my coworkers), but I still found beginner difficulty to be a little too constraining. I do think it's great for younger kids still trying to figure out the basics. Advanced mode was a little more my speed -- you get enough guidance to keep you on the track, but it's still possible to maneuver around a bit and it's not annoyingly slow. I still ran off the track a few times, especially after being rammed by my human opponents. The AI is a fair enough driver, and a good way to learn the ropes.

Model cars and track racing are the bread and butter of Hot Wheels, but they might look a little long in the tooth compared to flashy console games like Gran Turismo and Need for Speed. With the new Hot Wheels AI set, toy autos get a bit of a boost -- not just in speed, but in intelligence. Each Hot Wheels AI set comes with two cars, 20 pieces of track and two controllers. The 1/32 scale models look like normal toy cars, with snazzy shells not based on any existing real world vehicle -- the blue design is called "Fast Fish" and the orange one is "Spin King." Flip them over and underneath you'll find two infrared sensors similar to the ones on a Roomba.