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