Speaker 1: A everybody chuck Here for another one of our Christmas
Speaker 1: centric episodes with our twelve Days of Christmas Toys playlist,
Speaker 1: and today I'm very pleased to introduce to you an
Speaker 1: episode that I liked quite a bit because when I
Speaker 1: was a kid, I love me some hot wheels, and
Speaker 1: so this is that episode, How Hot Wheels Work. Pretty
Speaker 1: interesting story. Hope you guys enjoy it.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff you should know from HowStuffWorks dot com.
Speaker 3: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's
Speaker 3: Charles w Chuck Bryant, and Jerry.
Speaker 1: You know that just sounded like, what like, that's what
Speaker 1: happens like, You're having a nightmare and you MEI wakes
Speaker 1: you up in the middle of the night and he
Speaker 1: just goes, hey, welcome to the podcast, and then she
Speaker 1: slaps you across the face.
Speaker 3: Repart. That's true. Yeah, that is what that sounded like.
Speaker 1: That's what it sounded.
Speaker 3: It's pretty accurate. I don't know what got into me.
Speaker 1: You were just supercharged about this topic.
Speaker 3: Oh that's terrible. What supercharged?
Speaker 1: I don't get it.
Speaker 3: It's like a supercharged engine.
Speaker 1: Oh I didn't even think about that.
Speaker 3: Oh good, that makes me feel a little better.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know Jerry by the way before when I
Speaker 1: told her what we were doing, so, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: that was my favorite toy when I was a kid.
Speaker 3: Nice hot wheels are pretty great.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I had quite a collection, and I don't know
Speaker 1: where they are today.
Speaker 3: Oh really they're missing? Huh.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know if they were thrown out, or
Speaker 1: if if my brother has them, or they're my mom's
Speaker 1: attic or what. Because I'm kind of curious that I
Speaker 1: have any value.
Speaker 3: You need to find them. Yeah, they could be apparently,
Speaker 3: as far as hot wheels collectors go, it could be
Speaker 3: in mint condition all the way down to beat condition.
Speaker 1: Oh is that how they rank them? Yeah, mine would
Speaker 1: be beaters because I played with them like crazy.
Speaker 3: That's good. I mean, that's what they're for sure, you know.
Speaker 3: And there's value for a beater too, like some people
Speaker 3: apparently harvest them for parts to rebuild like a you know,
Speaker 3: a new Frankenstein model.
Speaker 1: Oh really, Yeah, that's pretty neat.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of stuff you can do with them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we should thank the fifth grader who wrote
Speaker 1: this article too.
Speaker 3: Sad face.
Speaker 1: I complained about that out loud to Holly. I was like,
Speaker 1: this article actually says sad face like as a sentence.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know had issues. I'm glad you said something.
Speaker 1: Yeah what if it was a fifth grader? Your feelings
Speaker 1: are all hurt.
Speaker 3: I think your feelings are hurt either way. Now, sad face.
Speaker 3: So we're talking about hot wheels today. I had a couple.
Speaker 3: My favorite toy was g I Joe, but I appreciated
Speaker 3: hot wheels.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I had GI Joe too.
Speaker 3: We do Gi Joe episode sometime. I had the older
Speaker 3: ones though you probably had huge ones. Yeah yeah, now
Speaker 3: I had the real ones.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh yeah, I don't that's fighting words.
Speaker 3: Man. The ones that I had were so awesome. They
Speaker 3: were like there was a huge, fast collection of all
Speaker 3: of them. Yeah, there was like cobra. Cobra didn't exist
Speaker 3: when you were collecting g I Joe's.
Speaker 1: No, but how could you say, like, oh, that one
Speaker 1: that's ten inches tall and has real clothes and fuzzy
Speaker 1: hair and the kung fu grip is inferior to this
Speaker 1: little plastic thing.
Speaker 3: I think you just said it. All the fuzzy hair
Speaker 3: says it right there. I don't really mean that, Chuck.
Speaker 3: I don't have a dog in that fight. Like if
Speaker 3: you like the big Gi Joe's. That's cool. I got
Speaker 3: some problems.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a quick side note. I have to tell
Speaker 1: this story, okay, when you know how he used to
Speaker 1: do book reports and you would have to have a
Speaker 1: visual aid. Yeah. I might have told this before. If
Speaker 1: I do, I apologize.
Speaker 3: I don't recognize it.
Speaker 1: I did a report on Franco Harris when in elementary
Speaker 1: school because he.
Speaker 3: Was a football player.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I don't know why I did on Franco Harris. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I got my mom to make me a little
Speaker 1: Pittsburgh Steelers uniform for my Gi joe because he looked
Speaker 1: like Franco Harris.
Speaker 3: Nice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that was my visual aid.
Speaker 3: Do you still have it?
Speaker 1: No, of course not. We have the Gi Joe's, but
Speaker 1: I think the Steelers uniform is gone. Bye bye.
Speaker 3: That's said. Yeah, you know, I'm sure your mom put
Speaker 3: a lot of work into that. Now I feel guilty, So, Chuck,
Speaker 3: I have a question for you. Yes, did you know
Speaker 3: that the number one vehicle manufacturer on the planet is,
Speaker 3: in fact Hot Wheels. I did it. Kind of It's
Speaker 3: astounding until you stop and think about it. Sure, like
Speaker 3: apparently since nineteen sixty eight, when Hot wheels were first introduced.
Speaker 3: More than four billion hot wheels have been produced. That's
Speaker 3: more than the big four Detroit automakers combined. You're like wow,
Speaker 3: and then you think, oh, yeah, it costs a minute
Speaker 3: fraction of the costure to build the hot wheels and
Speaker 3: it does a normal car.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Plus, Also, it's not like you're gonna go, I want
Speaker 3: this Buick Cutlass Supreme in every color, right, you know, Well,
Speaker 3: the hot wheels you can do that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. What's the Lego stat is? They're the biggest manufacturer
Speaker 1: of tires?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I wonder though, do these not count as tires
Speaker 1: because they're plastic they counts wheels?
Speaker 3: I don't know, man, because.
Speaker 1: Four billion times four that's sixteen billion tires.
Speaker 3: That's a really great question.
Speaker 1: I might have to challenge Lego or maybe just look
Speaker 1: up how many tires they manufacture.
Speaker 3: Old Kirk Christensen is not going to be happy about this.
Speaker 3: Who was that the founder of Lego? Oh remember Old?
Speaker 1: Oh that's right, I thought you were saying Old no over.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, So.
Speaker 3: Let's talk about the history of this stuff.
Speaker 1: Huh okay.
Speaker 3: So hot wheels, like I said, have been around since
Speaker 3: nineteen sixty eight and Anybody who's heard the Barbie Trademark
Speaker 3: podcast will recognize the name Elliott Handler. That's Ruth Handler,
Speaker 3: the inventor of Barbie Trademark's husband. Sure, and Elliott apparently
Speaker 3: saw a real chance to muscle in on an already
Speaker 3: extant market by a company called Tycho that had a
Speaker 3: line of miniature metal cars die cast cars is what
Speaker 3: they're called, called Matchbox cars.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 3: By the time hot wheels came around, match Box was
Speaker 3: already there and had established a market, and Mattel said,
Speaker 3: let's get in on that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And the rumor is that he saw his grandchildren
Speaker 1: playing with them and said, they kind of stink. I
Speaker 1: could make these better, yeah, cooler, And he had a
Speaker 1: as the story goes, had a designer, which we'll talk
Speaker 1: about in the second called Harry Bradley Sure, and he
Speaker 1: had a hot rod. And Elliott was in the parking
Speaker 1: lot one day and said, man, those are some hot
Speaker 1: wheels you got there.
Speaker 3: And apparently if you go look look at the old
Speaker 3: original commercials.
Speaker 1: For hot wheels, did they say that.
Speaker 3: That's how well, that's how they pronounced it hot wheels.
Speaker 1: Oh, instead of hot wheels.
Speaker 3: Yeah, The emphasis is on the hot awkward. They're like,
Speaker 3: race your hot wheels.
Speaker 1: You can make some of them, you can race them.
Speaker 3: Just go buy some hot wheels. That's what they That's
Speaker 3: how they say it, collect all your hot wheels.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but that makes more sense in the context of
Speaker 1: a sentence.
Speaker 3: It does having been raised right right, you know post
Speaker 3: the in fact hot wheels is wrong. Yeah, hot wheels
Speaker 3: because wheels.
Speaker 1: Now I'm trying to picture the guy in the parking
Speaker 1: lot saying those are some hot wheels you got on
Speaker 1: your there? You'd say hot wheels, you got there? You know, Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh boy, we can sure waste some time.
Speaker 3: We sure can.
Speaker 1: But the first nineteen sixty eight is, like you said,
Speaker 1: when the first line came out of sixteen hot wheels,
Speaker 1: they were sold initially for fifty nine cent apiece.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And like you said, the guy whose car originally
Speaker 3: inspired the name hot Wheels was Harry Bradley, and he
Speaker 3: was the designer of that first sixteen cars. They were
Speaker 3: also called California Customs Miniatures. Was that first original sixteen
Speaker 3: group of hot Wheels that were released in nineteen sixty eight. So,
Speaker 3: and Harry Bradley designed them all, including apparently he got
Speaker 3: his hands on The first one, by the way, that
Speaker 3: came out was a Chevy Camaro, of course. The second
Speaker 3: one that came out was the Chevy Corvette, of course,
Speaker 3: And apparently the Chevy Corvette came out before the actual
Speaker 3: Corvette came out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the sixty nine Corvette.
Speaker 3: That is so. Harry Bradley was an old hand in
Speaker 3: not just miniature car design, but car design in general.
Speaker 3: He was an old GM designer, and I guess he
Speaker 3: had connections still at GM, and probably under the table
Speaker 3: in a possibly illegal way, got his hands on the
Speaker 3: blueprints for the Corvette that hadn't been released yet, and
Speaker 3: Hot Wheels beat GM to the punch in releasing the
Speaker 3: nineteen sixty eight Corvette.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sixty nine, thank you, that's all right. The Yeah,
Speaker 1: as the lore goes, he supposedly knew that the cafeteria
Speaker 1: door was unlocked, so he snuck in through the cafeteria door.
Speaker 3: But that's called industrial espionage.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that sounds like a story like just lore, okay,
Speaker 1: but maybe so maybe he committed industrial espian che. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: like you said, those were the two of the first
Speaker 1: sixteen in that original lineup, that original collection, which if
Speaker 1: you have any of those, Yeah, Okay, yeah, you got
Speaker 1: some money that you're sitting on.
Speaker 3: Because I mean, like they went all out on those
Speaker 3: that original line oh yeah, Like there were bushings to
Speaker 3: the suspension. Yeah, and the I mean the chassis it
Speaker 3: had suspension like shocks, like you could press them down
Speaker 3: and it would bounce back.
Speaker 1: I had some of those. I don't think they were
Speaker 1: from sixty eight. But when did they quit making those?
Speaker 3: It set up until seventy seven was when they stopped making.
Speaker 1: The seventy is when the suspension got an overhaul.
Speaker 3: Okay, so for the first couple of years, like they
Speaker 3: were really putting a lot into these things. The tires
Speaker 3: were red line racing slicks, yeah, and the things. The
Speaker 3: whole reason they went to so much trouble is because
Speaker 3: they really wanted to destroy their competitor, match box. And
Speaker 3: one of the ways they did that was by making
Speaker 3: these things far more functional than the match boxes were.
Speaker 3: The matchbox cars were, so they really could race. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and if you put a matchbox car up against the
Speaker 3: comparable hot wheels, say the same model car, the hot
Speaker 3: Wheels will destroy it every time. And the head to
Speaker 3: head race.
Speaker 1: As we saw on the internet, a guy did that.
Speaker 1: Of course, he took two Volkswagens and two OUTI eight's
Speaker 1: I think, and one match box and one hot wheel,
Speaker 1: and he said they won by at least a car
Speaker 1: length every time he tried. And this was no loop
Speaker 1: de loop bring things, was just the straight race. They
Speaker 1: painted them originally in Spectra Flame, which was very shiny
Speaker 1: and sparkly and expensive. And I don't think we said
Speaker 1: that all hot wheels are built at one sixty fourth scale.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a big point.
Speaker 1: But not necessarily all matchbox cars. They kind of vary
Speaker 1: here and there, right, But like you said that Spectra
Speaker 1: Flame and the red line tires didn't only last until
Speaker 1: seventy seven, and the suspension only lasted untill nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: and they sadly a lot of that had to do
Speaker 1: with the fact that they moved them from Hawthorne, California
Speaker 1: to Hong Kong. Yeah, And like any product, you're like, hey,
Speaker 1: you can make it for half as much if you
Speaker 1: make it in China, so let's move. Let's ship the
Speaker 1: operations overseas well.
Speaker 3: Not only that, it's this Spectra flame pain is pretty expensive.
Speaker 3: It's awesome, it looks great, yeah, but it's pretty expensive.
Speaker 3: So with any collector's item. As they started to downgrade
Speaker 3: the components in the parts and the manufacturing and ultimately
Speaker 3: the final product, all that did was make the original
Speaker 3: stuff all the more valuable today, Yeah, because there was
Speaker 3: fewer and fewer of those as the years go on,
Speaker 3: proportionately speaking.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they had actual axles, like you know, it was
Speaker 1: like a real They were designed by car designers and
Speaker 1: they were made apparently to reach two hundred scale miles
Speaker 1: per hour.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: That's way cool.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Remember, like in the Cockroach episode, we talked about
Speaker 3: how they're the fastest animal on the planet relatively speaking.
Speaker 3: Pretty neat stuff. Yeah, so chuck right out of the gate,
Speaker 3: Mattel had a hit on its hands. Oh yes, they
Speaker 3: released them in nineteen sixty eight. By nineteen seventy, Hot
Speaker 3: Wheels was a Saturday Morning cartoon in the vein of
Speaker 3: like Dune Buggy and Scooby Doo and all those guys.
Speaker 3: Hanna barbera dune buggy or speed Buggy, Speed Buggy. Yeah
Speaker 3: remember speed Buggy. Yeah, it was like a dune buggy
Speaker 3: that could talk, and it was basically wonder bug No,
Speaker 3: it's speed Buggy. Okay, because there was under if you
Speaker 3: took Shaggy and put some like racing goggles on him. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and then turned Scooby Doo into a speed a doom Buggy. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's speed Buggy.
Speaker 1: Oh was that a cartoon?
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, went around solving mysteries and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, wonderbug was I think that was live action?
Speaker 3: Oh, this was a cartoon, said Marty Croft. This is
Speaker 3: exactly like Scooby Doo by the people who did Scooby Doo,
Speaker 3: using the same people who did the voices for Scooby Doo.
Speaker 3: It just vaguely changed the characters. Hot Wheels was virtually
Speaker 3: the same thing, except it was about racing clubs. There
Speaker 3: were the bad guys and good guys and.
Speaker 1: Do you know what this prus? What is the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: the doom Buggy was a very popular thing. You remember
Speaker 1: seeing those on the road, Like I used to see
Speaker 1: them all the time. Not all the time, but in
Speaker 1: the seventies it was a common thing. Yeah, you don't
Speaker 1: see him anymore, very rarely. Nope, No gremlins, no yukos, no,
Speaker 1: no wonder bugs.
Speaker 3: You know I like gremlins. Do you okay for me? Though?
Speaker 3: The Kudi gras of car design is the AMC Pacer. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's like the for Micah Kitchen of cars. Yeah, it's
Speaker 3: beautiful in all the weirdest ways.
Speaker 1: So much window.
Speaker 3: That would be my sought after hot wheels if I
Speaker 3: had a hot wheels that if I just could have
Speaker 3: one hot wheel, Yeah, it would. I don't know if
Speaker 3: that would be it. I'd be happy with that one.
Speaker 1: Now do they have that it's a hot wheel? Oh?
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, And if you look up AMC Gremlin hot wheels, yeah,
Speaker 3: they went to town on those. They had some with
Speaker 3: like the intakes like sticking out of the hood and yeah,
Speaker 3: just all sorts of just awesome different variations like indie
Speaker 3: car Gremlins and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Because and that raises a pretty good point. Hot wheels
Speaker 3: has always been about the racing design, Like they've designed
Speaker 3: them to look like racing cars, but they've also manufactured
Speaker 3: them to actually be able to win a race, like
Speaker 3: we talked about with Matchbox.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and one of the differences that is one of
Speaker 1: the main differences between the match box and the hot
Speaker 1: wheel is they were just much more interested in being sportier,
Speaker 1: like you could get you could get a match box
Speaker 1: like a delivery truck, right, you know they had that,
Speaker 1: but the match Boxes looked more real. They all were
Speaker 1: about looking realistic and not necessarily performance. And hey, if
Speaker 1: you want a bread truck, you can get a bread truck,
Speaker 1: right exactly, But you can't get a bread truck hot Wheel.
Speaker 3: You know, we'll talk more about all of this jam
Speaker 3: right after this.
Speaker 1: You want to go ahead and talk about some of
Speaker 1: the other differences between Matchbox and hot Wheel, Yes, sure,
Speaker 1: since we're at it. Match Box or I'm sorry, hot
Speaker 1: Wheel is the one that is more likely to have
Speaker 1: branded versions, oh man.
Speaker 3: And do they ever like.
Speaker 1: The Ghostbusters ectomobile.
Speaker 3: Right or even more than that, Like they have a
Speaker 3: deal with eminem Mars for twenty fifteen, so they have
Speaker 3: like a TwixT trucks and a Skittles van and like
Speaker 3: all this stuff. They have licensing with DC and Marvel this.
Speaker 1: Year, Fast and the Furious. I know they had a
Speaker 1: line yep.
Speaker 3: So they're really big time into branded and a lot
Speaker 3: of times they'll have like a store will just have exclusives,
Speaker 3: access to an exclusive line of Skittles cars or something
Speaker 3: like that that you can only get it KB toys.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think they have a NASCAR deal too. If
Speaker 1: I'm not mistaken, I would not be surprised. And the
Speaker 1: hot wheels usually have a little bit wider, a longer axle,
Speaker 1: and wider wheels because it's just cooler that wheel sticks
Speaker 1: out from the body a little bit, you know.
Speaker 3: Well, plus also supposedly, and we'll talk about this a
Speaker 3: little more, when you shrink a car down to scale,
Speaker 3: it looks a little weird.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you might as well ahead and bring that up. Okay,
Speaker 1: it looks weird. You can't just shrink it and have
Speaker 1: it in the same proportion and have it look normal.
Speaker 3: Right Like, it'll be as far as like shrinking a
Speaker 3: car down by scale, it will be in the exact
Speaker 3: same proportion. But it's just awful little bit like. So
Speaker 3: what they do to make a hot wheels raceable is
Speaker 3: they expand the wheel well a little more. Yeah, they
Speaker 3: break it out a little bit. Yeah, which is why
Speaker 3: the wheel stick out some on a hot wheels, but
Speaker 3: not on a match box. That's right, because match boxes
Speaker 3: are all about realism. To heck with how it looks,
Speaker 3: as long as it's real.
Speaker 1: The one of my favorite ones, and I had one
Speaker 1: of these that they mentioned this article was the red barren.
Speaker 1: The person who wrote this said it was an inexplicable
Speaker 1: and inexplicably cool helmet over the cockpit. I don't know
Speaker 1: about inexplicable. It was just the roof of the car
Speaker 1: was a helmet, right. But I looked it up again, Tod,
Speaker 1: and I was like, oh, yeah, I had that thing,
Speaker 1: but it was It wasn't a Nazi helmet per se,
Speaker 1: but it was that shape of the helmet like the
Speaker 1: US oldiers had that shape now, you know, where it's
Speaker 1: cut lower around the ears instead of just a straight
Speaker 1: you know, like the World War two helmet. But the
Speaker 1: Nazis used those first, you know, because it's a better
Speaker 1: design for war. And it also had a black iron
Speaker 1: cross on the side of it.
Speaker 3: Well hence the red baron, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it was It's easy now as an adulta
Speaker 1: look and say that looks like a little Nazi hot rod.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but the red baron was World War One. He
Speaker 3: was pre Nazi Germany.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And it was also I think at the time
Speaker 1: just like looked like the biker gang would wear like
Speaker 1: those helmet with the iron cross.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and all of it was Southern California hot rod culture. Yeah,
Speaker 3: what gave rise to Hot Wheels, so it makes sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't think there was any like sartitious intent.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So, like I said, right out of the gate,
Speaker 3: hot Wheels was a hit. They had a cartoon within
Speaker 3: a year or so of the first sixteen being released. Sure,
Speaker 3: the second release they had I think twenty.
Speaker 1: Two new cars, yeah, thirty three total.
Speaker 3: And then the third year they had another. They released
Speaker 3: thirty three after that, right.
Speaker 1: Oh no, yeah, I'm sorry, thirty three by nineteen seventy.
Speaker 3: So they did sixteen, twenty four and then thirty three
Speaker 3: and all of them came in like different colors, right, So,
Speaker 3: like I said, if you had one, that didn't mean
Speaker 3: you had them all. You wanted to collect them all.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So kids were going crazy for it. And another way
Speaker 3: that Mattel very wisely targeted children was to get in
Speaker 3: with fast food. In nineteen seventy, the first Hot Wheels
Speaker 3: came out as a toy at Jack in the Boxes.
Speaker 1: Oh really Yeah.
Speaker 3: The big one though, the one that put them over
Speaker 3: the top, was in nineteen eighty three when kids who
Speaker 3: were lucky enough to be taken to McDonald's for dinner.
Speaker 1: The happy meal exactly hot Wheel.
Speaker 3: Which is what they called of at the time, Uh,
Speaker 3: or could get one of fourteen hot wheels. Yeah, in
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty three, and they had some cool once. They
Speaker 3: had a Chevy citation.
Speaker 1: Did they really?
Speaker 3: Yeah, they had one that was one of my favorite. Actually.
Speaker 3: It was a Toyota Mini Trek, which is like a
Speaker 3: station wagon camper and it even said painted on the side,
Speaker 3: good time Camper that you could get in your happy meal,
Speaker 3: which if I could have one hot wheel, it would
Speaker 3: probably be that.
Speaker 1: You know what they were doing now that I look
Speaker 1: back through my adult.
Speaker 3: Eyes, like snorting pot.
Speaker 1: No, they were giving you a bunch of crappy ones
Speaker 1: because you wanted to keep coming back to get the
Speaker 1: cool one.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Probably you're like, ah, I got a citation, like, can
Speaker 1: I go back because I want to get the hot rod? Right,
Speaker 1: That's exactly what they were doing. Sure, man, I feel
Speaker 1: so like manipulated.
Speaker 3: What did you think they were doing with happy Meals?
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, I know it was all manipulation to
Speaker 1: get you to try and own all of them, right,
Speaker 1: but they should have been all cool ones. But you
Speaker 1: can't do that because the regular kid might be like, no,
Speaker 1: I got the cool one. I'm fine. But if you
Speaker 1: get the citation, you feel jipped off and you really
Speaker 1: want to go back and get one of the hot rods. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's my eyes are wide open, my friends.
Speaker 3: Well, that's why our friends down under in Australia have
Speaker 3: like outlawed marketing directly to children, which I think is
Speaker 3: a fantastic mode. Really, yeah, that's so unfair to market
Speaker 3: directly to children. It's just almost literally is like taking
Speaker 3: candy from a baby. Like kids aren't sophisticated enough to
Speaker 3: psychologically defend themselves from being like bombarded with by adults
Speaker 3: to say, go tell your parents to buy you this.
Speaker 3: You can't function correctly without this trapper keeper, so go
Speaker 3: get it.
Speaker 1: The traffic keeper.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: What do they make a law?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Really yeah, it's a big one, very progressive law.
Speaker 3: Big all countries should adopt.
Speaker 1: Well. In nineteen eighty three, I agree wholeheartedly. By the way,
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty three is when that happy meal thing happened.
Speaker 1: And also the same year they moved from Hong Kong
Speaker 1: to Malaysia, and it said that's when they added their
Speaker 1: economy cars, so that must have coincided with the citation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the citation man one of the most disappointing Happy
Speaker 3: Meal toys you could possibly.
Speaker 1: Get, Yeah, because it reminded you of your dad, who
Speaker 1: drove a citation.
Speaker 3: Right, who was always mad.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh, dear so Chuckers.
Speaker 3: Yes, After nineteen eighty three, not a lot happened. Hot
Speaker 3: Oils just kept going on, expanding more and more and more.
Speaker 3: I think they had another Happy Meals joint in ninety
Speaker 3: one or something like that. And in nineteen ninety five
Speaker 3: they said, we need, we need to do something big,
Speaker 3: and they did. They were at least something called Treasure
Speaker 3: Hunt series, which was a purposefully limited release car series
Speaker 3: of cars. Yeah. I think they did twelve models at
Speaker 3: ten thousand each originally, and hence the name Treasure Hunt.
Speaker 3: They are hard to find.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And one of the cooler ones for me was
Speaker 1: the Oldsmobile for forty two.
Speaker 3: Yeah. The thing is neat.
Speaker 1: A dude at my church had a four forty two
Speaker 1: and it was just awesome, man. He was he had
Speaker 1: like the only muscle car in the youth group. And years,
Speaker 1: like two years ago, my brother I was talking about
Speaker 1: this dude, Jason Singleton. I was like, whatever happened to him?
Speaker 1: He's like, oh, he still lives in the so and so,
Speaker 1: and he went and you know what, dude, I went,
Speaker 1: no went, He still got it.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, why would you get rid of it?
Speaker 1: He still has the car. Went to his Facebook page
Speaker 1: and it is like the center of his life. I'm
Speaker 1: sure it's his baby. I mean, he's had that thing
Speaker 1: since like nineteen eighty six and just it's juiced up
Speaker 1: and he's just gre the daylights out of me and
Speaker 1: that thing. But it was also exhilarating, you know, to
Speaker 1: be riding with him and he you know, like two
Speaker 1: hundred feet of drag. He would lay like power breaking
Speaker 1: and he would get like four sets of tires a year.
Speaker 3: He'd be in the passenger seat going saved me Jesus.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was very scared because I was you know,
Speaker 1: I didn't flirt with the wild side back then.
Speaker 3: No, so Oldsmobile four forty two is as close as
Speaker 3: you got.
Speaker 1: Yep. It was exhilarating.
Speaker 3: And then so that was nineteen ninety five. This treasure
Speaker 3: Hunt thing kind of went. It didn't go exactly as plan.
Speaker 3: Mattel was like, oh, we could make even more money
Speaker 3: if we put these into a wider release. Yeah, So
Speaker 3: the original ten thousand releases were redoing again and again
Speaker 3: and again. So treasure hunt kind of became commonplace, sure,
Speaker 3: but it was a good idea and it tapped into
Speaker 3: this whole idea of collecting. Like Mattel was like, we
Speaker 3: know you're out there, and we're going to design these
Speaker 3: just for you. Yeah, and we'll talk more about collectors,
Speaker 3: but just to kind of button up the history of
Speaker 3: Hot Wheels, it all came full circle in nineteen ninety
Speaker 3: six when Mattel bought Tycho and hence Hot Wheels bought Matchbox.
Speaker 1: So they're all owned by Mattel at this point. Yes,
Speaker 1: all right, we'll get to the design and collecting it
Speaker 1: right after this. So back then, if you wanted to
Speaker 1: do a smaller version of a larger car and scale
Speaker 1: it down, you didn't have computer aided design and stuff.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you might have had a blueprint, which helped, but
Speaker 1: sometimes you just had to get out there in the
Speaker 1: parking lot with the tape measure yeah, and just take
Speaker 1: some measurements and then you know, be good at math,
Speaker 1: right basically.
Speaker 3: And like like we said, Harry Bradley, who's the daddy
Speaker 3: of the Hot Wheels designs, who's the guy who did
Speaker 3: the first sixteen He was a GM designer. Originally in
Speaker 3: his footsteps followed Howard Reese and then after that Larry
Speaker 3: would and they those are some of like the legendary
Speaker 3: Hot Wheels designers.
Speaker 1: That's the Mount Rushmore of hot wheels pretty much.
Speaker 3: Yeah and yeah. They would just literally go out and
Speaker 3: measure these things. And that was one way that hot
Speaker 3: wheels were born. Another way was that And this definitely
Speaker 3: differentiates Hot Wheels from match Box is that there are
Speaker 3: hot Wheels that only exist in the Hot Wheels world.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: They they are called the fantasy cars, like they're just
Speaker 3: the designer's imagination come to life.
Speaker 1: Right Whereas match Box only I believe, has bread trucks exactly, Well,
Speaker 1: they only have cars that are based on real cars,
Speaker 1: right right.
Speaker 3: Hot Wheels has a whole fantasy line.
Speaker 1: It's interesting that they're owned byes of the same company
Speaker 1: still and they just have kept that distinction. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: I guess some people are Matchbox kids and some kids
Speaker 1: are Hot Wheels kids. I had both. I think I
Speaker 1: had a bread truck.
Speaker 3: Is that why you keep going to the bread truck?
Speaker 1: Well, no, I didn't have a bread truck, but I
Speaker 1: do remember having a couple of like weird utility type vehicles.
Speaker 1: Huh huh. That I don't remember. There were probably gifts
Speaker 1: or stocking stuffers or something.
Speaker 3: Huh.
Speaker 1: I don't think I like sought it out.
Speaker 3: I was always into Tonka trucks. I thought Tonko was great.
Speaker 3: They were obviously much bigger, but those were like construction vehicles,
Speaker 3: like dump trucks and stuff like that. And still today
Speaker 3: that Volvo dump truck, the giant one, yeah, with the
Speaker 3: huge wheels, I think is one of the coolest vehicles
Speaker 3: ever created. Yeah, I think I had one of those.
Speaker 3: When I was a kid.
Speaker 1: I didn't have a lot of Tonka stuff. One of
Speaker 1: my favorite hot wheels though, was the little red Express truck.
Speaker 3: I don't remember that if.
Speaker 1: You saw it, you might it might a bell that
Speaker 1: was basically uh, I can't remember what kind of truck
Speaker 1: it was. I think it was a Dodge, but it
Speaker 1: was just a cool red step side pickup truck and
Speaker 1: it had the two vertical mufflers on each side that
Speaker 1: went up above the truck.
Speaker 3: I think I know what you're talking about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's really cool. And if you go to
Speaker 1: the the Peterson Automotive Museum in La oh, yeah, They
Speaker 1: have a really cool exhibit there that I haven't been
Speaker 1: to in person, but I was looking at it, a
Speaker 1: line permanent exhibit where they have the real life versions
Speaker 1: of the hot wheel cars and they have a little
Speaker 1: red express truck, a full size one. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: saw it and I was like.
Speaker 3: Whoa, did you just die from nostalgia?
Speaker 1: Look might have teered up a little bit at the desk,
Speaker 1: but they have, you know, the the gussied up corvettes
Speaker 1: with the big chrome engines coming out of the hood.
Speaker 3: And do they have the four to four to two.
Speaker 1: I don't know if they have the four forty two.
Speaker 3: But I'm very well, when your friend dies, but it's
Speaker 3: in his will.
Speaker 1: I'll go straight to the muse. Yeah, I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: to this thing though at some point I don't know,
Speaker 1: on this next LA trip or not. But it's right
Speaker 1: there near the labri of tarpets. I think, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: so I want to go check it out.
Speaker 3: I've been there. Yeah, it's neat.
Speaker 1: It is neat. But back to the design. These days,
Speaker 1: you're not gonna need a tape measure and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: You're gonna photoshop designs and you're gonna even get a
Speaker 1: three D printer to your prototype.
Speaker 3: That had to have helped them tremendously. Yeah, because you know,
Speaker 3: with if you're designing real life cars and you have
Speaker 3: a three D printer, that's pretty handy, but with Hot Wheels, like,
Speaker 3: you can print out pretty much exactly what it's gonna
Speaker 3: look like. Sure, and once they have the the prototype done,
Speaker 3: they'll make them. They'll make a mold out of it
Speaker 3: and then inject it with molten metal under tremendous pressure. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and that's why it's called die cast. You create a
Speaker 3: dye that you cast all of the ensuing ones from.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think they're made with less metal than
Speaker 1: they used to be, but they they still have metal components, right.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I haven't seen a new one in a while.
Speaker 3: I haven't either, but I'm almost positive they do. And
Speaker 3: apparently they're still about like a dollar. Oh really Yeah.
Speaker 3: I was on the Hot Wheels collector site today and
Speaker 3: like they kept making reference to about a dollar. So
Speaker 3: just what's called the mainline? Yeah, the ones that they
Speaker 3: make on mass.
Speaker 1: The citation exactly.
Speaker 3: I'll bet if you've got your hands on that nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty three citation it'd be worth a few books. You're right,
Speaker 3: but they kept referring to the mainline stuff about a dollar.
Speaker 1: Well, they've just kept making their manufacturing cheaper and cheaper,
Speaker 1: so they've maintained that cost. I guess. Yeah. So as
Speaker 1: far as collecting goes, the most valuable and that is
Speaker 1: not this crazy one made out of diamonds for the
Speaker 1: fortieth anniversary, which we'll talk about in a minute, But
Speaker 1: the most valuable regular hot wheel is the sixty eight
Speaker 1: beach Bomb, which was a VW bus and hot pink
Speaker 1: that had real surfboard stick it out of the back.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Originally they only released I think twenty five of
Speaker 3: them like that. There were a couple of problems. It
Speaker 3: was difficult to manufacture them with the surfboard sticking on
Speaker 3: the back, even though it was more realistic sure, and
Speaker 3: it also was terrible on like a loopy loop track, yeah,
Speaker 3: because I guess the surfboards would either way them down
Speaker 3: or it would get stuck. So they only made just
Speaker 3: a few of these things. The beach Bomb that was
Speaker 3: the highest selling the hogh Wheels ever, was a pink one.
Speaker 3: They made even fewer of those because apparently a lot
Speaker 3: of boys were like, oh, I'm not playing with some
Speaker 3: pink van, even if it does have cool surfboards sticking
Speaker 3: out of the back. So the thing sold for like,
Speaker 3: I think seventy something seventy five thousand dollars in two thousand,
Speaker 3: and it has since sold again in twenty eleven. I
Speaker 3: saw in like LA magazine for like one hundred and
Speaker 3: twenty five thousand.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a lot of money for a tiny little car.
Speaker 3: Yeah it is. And that's the highest one ever apparently
Speaker 3: by a long shot too.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean I've seen others that were worth like
Speaker 1: ten grand and stuff, Like I think one of those
Speaker 1: four to forty two originals is like ten grand.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess like nineteen seventy mongoose or cobra are
Speaker 3: worth about ten grand these days, and a lot of them,
Speaker 3: just like with any collector's item, you'll see if there
Speaker 3: was just a few of them made, obviously they're gonna
Speaker 3: be worth a lot more if there was something that
Speaker 3: where they adjusted the design, like for example, the python
Speaker 3: was originally called the Cheetah. Yeah, and then they found
Speaker 3: out that a real life executive with real life lawyers
Speaker 3: at GM owned the name Cheetah, because apparently GM executives
Speaker 3: just owned names for cars that could potentially be.
Speaker 1: Used like every anifast animal name.
Speaker 3: Right, exactly. Yeah, so they changed it to the python,
Speaker 3: but that was after they'd started manufacturing the cheetah. So
Speaker 3: there's some out there that say Cheetah stamped on the bottom,
Speaker 3: and if you have one of those, it's for ten.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's funny to think about. It's the same with
Speaker 1: Star Wars, like sometimes the mistake ones are the ones
Speaker 1: that are super valuable because like there was some recall,
Speaker 1: but they're like, oh, but you want that one because
Speaker 1: the Boba FET's rocket really shot out before kids started
Speaker 1: joking on them, right or catching on fire. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that's the one you want. Yeah, But like you said,
Speaker 1: it's all about scarcity and supplying to man.
Speaker 3: Dude. This whole thing is reminded me of a really
Speaker 3: great gallery I put together about hilarious knockoff toys.
Speaker 1: Oh that's a good one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, go to stuff youshould know dot com and look
Speaker 3: that up. It's pretty awesome. There's some really strange interpretations
Speaker 3: of beloved toys, including Star Wars toys, that people who
Speaker 3: make counterfeit toys come up with to try to skirt
Speaker 3: trademark law. Maybe or something or else. They just fully
Speaker 3: don't understand the toy and what it's a lure is,
Speaker 3: so they just make it in this weird interpretation. It's
Speaker 3: pretty hilarious stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a good one. We'll post that again, okay.
Speaker 1: And then I did mention the diamond studded one. I
Speaker 1: always think these things are just ridiculous. But like to
Speaker 1: take any like of the diamond studded bras it was worth,
Speaker 1: you know, oh yeah, for million bucks. I just always
Speaker 1: think it's kind of dumb. But they did make a
Speaker 1: fortieth anniversary in edition in nineteen I'm sorry, in two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight with twenty seven hundred little diamonds and
Speaker 1: rubies for tail lights and black diamonds for the tires
Speaker 1: and all that stuff. Eighteen care at white cold body.
Speaker 1: But it's where the one hundred and forty or it costs
Speaker 1: one hundred and forty thousand dollars to put together.
Speaker 3: I'm sure it's gaudy. It's a gaudy hot wheels. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so the car's cool. It looks like Mad Max's car.
Speaker 1: Oh you get is that a picture of it?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: I don't think I saw that.
Speaker 3: Can you identify that car? Uh?
Speaker 1: What is that looks familiar? It does look familiar to
Speaker 1: its sort of like a Dolorean, but I don't think
Speaker 1: it is.
Speaker 3: I don't think so either.
Speaker 1: No, man, that new Mad Max looks good though.
Speaker 3: Are you making Mad Max?
Speaker 1: Well, there's a new reboot I guess is what they
Speaker 1: call it these days?
Speaker 3: Cool? Who's in it?
Speaker 1: What's his face that played Bain So? Yeah, Tom, Tom?
Speaker 1: What's no? But uh, it looks it's the same director,
Speaker 1: Tom Hardy. Yeah, Tom Hardy. But it's the same director
Speaker 1: from all the Mad Max series. So it's oh really yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah wow, And it just looks it's the whole it's
Speaker 1: supposed to be just like one long intense chase battle.
Speaker 3: Yeah, sounds a lot like a Mad Max movie.
Speaker 1: Yep, what you want?
Speaker 3: Have you ever seen Vanishing Point?
Speaker 1: I think so? What is that?
Speaker 3: It was? Like, Man, I can't remember the car, but
Speaker 3: the car was basically the Star. It was on long
Speaker 3: car chase from like I think Colorado to California.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I remember that.
Speaker 3: It's a good one from the seventies.
Speaker 1: Yeah, two lane Blacktops Challenger.
Speaker 3: It's another the car. Yeah, I haven't seen that one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's good. When that one weirdly had James Taylor
Speaker 1: in it when he was young and like on drugs
Speaker 1: and cool.
Speaker 3: Were they apologizing to France?
Speaker 1: I don't know what they deal was.
Speaker 3: Did you hear about that? No, so that whole Charlie
Speaker 3: Hebdoh Solidarity March the US sent like, yeah, I think
Speaker 3: the assistant that could be in charge of the USDA
Speaker 3: or something like that. Yeah, So to apologize, John Carey
Speaker 3: had James Taylor go to France to perform. You've got
Speaker 3: a French shut up for the French government.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just talk about beer. I know, isn't it send
Speaker 1: guns n' roses or something at least well not guns n'
Speaker 1: roses from nineteen eighty eight.
Speaker 3: Any guns n' roses? Man. One more thing about collecting.
Speaker 3: If you wanted to be the coolest collector of hot
Speaker 3: wheels on the planet, you would have to build a
Speaker 3: time machine and go back to nineteen eighty seven to
Speaker 3: my hometown of Toledo, Ohio, which is where the first
Speaker 3: ever hot Wheels Convention Collector's Convention was held. I really
Speaker 3: wish I would have gone to that because I was
Speaker 3: there at the time. What year was it, eighty seven?
Speaker 1: Oh? Yeah, yeah, I can't believe we sent James Tayler
Speaker 1: still just like, yeah, I can't focus on anything.
Speaker 3: Well, if you want to know more about James Taylor,
Speaker 3: hot wheels, or just about anything there is in the universe,
Speaker 3: you can type it into the search bar at HowStuffWorks
Speaker 3: dot com. And since I said search, bart's time for
Speaker 3: listener mail.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this minimum wage argument not argument proposal.
Speaker 3: All right.
Speaker 1: Listened to How Homelessness Works from quite a few years ago,
Speaker 1: and you guys commented that part of the problem was
Speaker 1: a low minimum wage. In comparison the cost of renting
Speaker 1: a two bedroom apartment, you'd have to work something like
Speaker 1: eighty seven per hours eighty seven hours per week to
Speaker 1: afford it, the implication we need to raise minimum wage.
Speaker 1: After hearing this, a clear solution occurred to me. I
Speaker 1: think disagreements on raising minimum wage as a result with
Speaker 1: simple misunderstanding. On the raise side, people believe this wage
Speaker 1: should be set at a level that would allow someone
Speaker 1: to raise a few children and live a modest but
Speaker 1: reasonably comfortable level, or at least a safe level. On
Speaker 1: the don't raise it side, people believe minimum wage is
Speaker 1: just a starting point for working, like for teenagers, at
Speaker 1: their summer job or after school. This ide believes workers
Speaker 1: should were never intended to and should not expect to
Speaker 1: be able to support a family that pays minimum wage.
Speaker 1: So here's my solution. Since we're a democracy here, let's
Speaker 1: just decide what it is supposed to accomplish and then
Speaker 1: set it at the appropriate level to do that. If
Speaker 1: we decide it's a nation that someone should be able
Speaker 1: to raise a family rent a two bedroom apartment while
Speaker 1: earning a wage minimum wage, let's just figure out what
Speaker 1: that would cost and set the wage there. Figure in rent, clothing, food, utilities, transportation, etc.
Speaker 1: Let's say it's twenty seven grand per year, then set
Speaker 1: it at that rate. On the other hand, if we
Speaker 1: as a nation decide that minimum wage is just a
Speaker 1: starting point, not meant to support a family. It's intended
Speaker 1: for people with no work history or experience and low
Speaker 1: to no marketable skills, and we need to set minimum
Speaker 1: wage at a relatively low level and let the market.
Speaker 1: The free market will ultimately determine the wage for entry
Speaker 1: level workers, and workers historically have been able to increase
Speaker 1: compensation by gaining skills and good work history. With a settle,
Speaker 1: any argument about setting minimum wage at a living wage
Speaker 1: would be mistaken because we all just decided that people
Speaker 1: are not meant to live on minimum wage and certainly
Speaker 1: not meant to support a family. That is from Joe
Speaker 1: Prohaska in Reno, Nevada, and its interesting. I look forward
Speaker 1: to seeing the rebuttal emails.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I love that kind of stuff. Yeah, it's a
Speaker 3: great proposal. I mean, I think that is what it's
Speaker 3: based on.
Speaker 1: Sure, but as far.
Speaker 3: As I know, the cost of living calculations are really
Speaker 3: date Yeah, and take a lot of stuff into account
Speaker 3: that doesn't really apply any longer.
Speaker 1: Plus, regardless of what you think it should or should
Speaker 1: not be, the fact is, adults with two kids are
Speaker 1: still going to be working these jobs. It's not just
Speaker 1: going to be teenagers looking to advance.
Speaker 3: But it would be nice to put that issue to bed,
Speaker 3: to say, like, this is what we're trying to achieve,
Speaker 3: or this is not what we're trying to achieve. At
Speaker 3: the very least you get everybody talking.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because should some teenager at his first job make
Speaker 1: like fourteen bucks an hour?
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's sending the right message either.
Speaker 3: I don't know. I don't know we'll leave it up
Speaker 3: to you guys, our dear listeners.
Speaker 1: When I started working, it was like three bucks an
Speaker 1: hour or something. It was ridiculously low.
Speaker 3: That is ridiculously low. Yeah, if you want to let
Speaker 3: us know how you feel about Joe's proposal, was it Joe?
Speaker 1: I believe it was Joe Reno, Joe Reno Joe.
Speaker 3: You can tweet to us at sysk podcast. You can
Speaker 3: post it on Facebook dot com, slash Stuff you Should Know.
Speaker 3: You can put it in an email. It's stuff podcast
Speaker 3: at HowStuffWorks dot com, and just for kicks, you can
Speaker 3: hang around our home on the web Stuff you Should
Speaker 3: Know dot com.
Speaker 2: For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
Speaker 2: HowStuffWorks dot com.
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