Spectraflame

Spectraflame is the name used by Mattel for the radical finishes sported by their original "Hot Wheels" cars in 1968 thru 1972. The finish was technically not standard paint, it was Transparent but wildly-colored candy-apple paint, applied atop a polished zinc plated castings, giving a surprisingly realistic metallic effect, as was popular at the time on real cars. In 1955 Mel_Pinoli laid what is known as the first Candy Apple paint job. The car was a 1950 Chevrolet belonging to Ted Leventhal.

In 1973,  Due to the study of lead in paint and it's effects on humans the original spectraflame (candy-apple paint) was banned from manufacturing. Spectraflame was replaced by a conventional enamel paint , this included a metallic enamel paints. Although not the same Candy-apple paint , A new paint and process is now used for special editions, Mattel still calls it there trade name Spectraflame. After doing a bit of web crawling , Mattel is now using a chrome finish on the newer cars to get that shine threw the water based transparent paint. This is changing though, to chrome the cars is too expensive. I was reading in PPG there is a metal liquid that can be applied then the pigmented transparent paint over that. This is in there advertising Hot Wheels spectraflame paint colors.

While most Spectraflame color names are self-explanatory,  Antifreeze was for some reason described as "lime green", but there are two colors a Lime Green and Antifreeze. Antifreeze was seen first though. Also light pink as "Lavender" and later changing to "Salmon".

Colors seem to change as the years went by. It is unsure if it was different manufacture, mixes, color change. But one thing is for sure early colors '68-69 are quite different than there later brother '70-72. With additional colors being created and some just got lost. So some casting you just wont find or near impossible to find in the early to late color changes. Examples: 1968 Custom Camaro in Magenta. 1971 Evil Weevil in Hot Pink. they just do not exist.

On Car Color Chart

Apple Green

Olive

Creamy Pink

Blue

Red

Watermelon-- One tough color to capture in a photo. this is close.

Antifreeze

Orange

Rose - red leaning toward pink

Purple

Aqua

Copper

Ice Blue

Green

Light Blue

Hot Pink

Lime Green

Yellow