SYSK's 12 Days of Christmas… Toys: How Hot Wheels Work

Transcript

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Speaker 3 Hey, everybody, Chuck here for another one of our Christmas-centric episodes with our 12 Days of Christmas Toys playlist.

Speaker 3 And today, I'm very pleased to introduce to you an episode that I liked quite a bit because when I was a kid, I love me some Hot Wheels. And so, this is that episode: How Hot Wheels Work.

Speaker 3 Pretty interesting story. Hope you guys enjoy it.

Speaker 1 Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com.

Speaker 2 Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry.
You know that just sounded like what?

Speaker 3 Like that's what happens like you're having a nightmare and Yumi wakes you up in the middle of the night and you just go, hey welcome to the podcast. And then she slaps you across the face real hard.

Speaker 3 It's true.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 That is what that sounded like. That's what it sounded like.
It's pretty accurate. I don't know what got into me.

Speaker 3 You were just supercharged about this topic.

Speaker 2 That was terrible.

Speaker 2 Supercharged?

Speaker 3 I don't get it.

Speaker 2 It's like a supercharged engine.

Speaker 3 Oh, I didn't even think about that. Oh, good.

Speaker 2 Well, that makes me feel a little better. Yeah.

Speaker 3 You know, Jerry, by the way, before when I told her what we were doing, so, oh, my gosh, that was my favorite toy when I was a kid.

Speaker 2 Nice. Hot wheels are pretty great.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I had quite a collection, and I don't know where they are today.

Speaker 2 Oh, really? They're missing, huh?

Speaker 3 Yeah, I don't know if they were thrown out or if

Speaker 3 my brother has them or they're in my mom's attic or what, because I'm kind of curious if I have any value. Yeah, you need to find them.

Speaker 2 Yeah. They could be, apparently, as far as Hot Wheels collectors go, they could be in mint condition all the way down to beater condition.

Speaker 3 Oh, is that how they rank them? Yeah. Mine would be beaters because I played with them like crazy.
That's good.

Speaker 2 I mean, that's what they're for. Sure.
You know? And there's value for a beater too. Like, some people apparently harvest them for parts to rebuild like

Speaker 2 a new Frankenstein model. Oh, really? Yeah.
That's pretty neat. There's a lot of stuff you can do with them.

Speaker 3 Yeah, and we should thank the fifth grader who wrote this article, too.

Speaker 2 Sad face.

Speaker 3 I complained about that out loud to Holly. I was like, this article actually says sad face, like as a sentence.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 I know. Had issues.
I'm glad you said something.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 3 What if it was a fifth grader?

Speaker 2 Her feelings are all hurt. I think her feelings are hurt either way now.
Sad face.

Speaker 2 So we're talking about Hot Wheels today. I had a couple.

Speaker 2 My favorite toy was G.I. Joe, but I appreciated Hot Wheels.
Yeah, I had G.I. Joe, too.
We should do a G.I. Joe episode sometime.
I had the older ones, though.

Speaker 3 You probably had the older.

Speaker 2 The huge ones? Yeah. Yeah.
No, I had the real ones. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Oh. Yeah.

Speaker 3 I don't, that's fighting words.

Speaker 2 Man, the ones that I had were so awesome. They were like, there was a huge, vast collection of all of them.
There was like Cobra. Cobra didn't exist when you were collecting G.I.
Joes.

Speaker 3 No, but how could you say, like, oh, that one that's 10 inches tall and has real clothes and fuzzy hair and the kung fu grip is inferior to this little plastic thing?

Speaker 2 I think you just said it all.

Speaker 2 The fuzzy hair. It says it right there.

Speaker 2 I don't really mean that, Chuck. I don't have a dog in that fight.
Like, if you like the big G.I. Joe's, that's cool.
I got no problems.

Speaker 3 Yeah, as a quick side note, I have to tell this story. Okay.

Speaker 3 You know how I used to do book reports and you would have to have a visual aid? Yeah.

Speaker 3 I might have told this before. If I do, I apologize.

Speaker 2 I don't recognize it.

Speaker 3 I did a report on Franco Harris when in elementary school because he was a...

Speaker 2 The football player? Yeah.

Speaker 2 I don't know why I did it on Franco Harris.

Speaker 3 But I got my mom to make me a little Pittsburgh Steelers uniform for my G.I. Joe because he looked like Franco Harris.
Nice. Yeah, and that was my visual aid.

Speaker 2 Do you still have it?

Speaker 3 No, of course not.

Speaker 3 We had the G.I. Joe's, but I think the Steelers uniform is gone bye-bye.

Speaker 2 That's sad. Yeah.
You know, I'm sure your mom put a lot of work into that.

Speaker 2 Now I feel guilty.

Speaker 2 So, Chuck, I have a question for you. Yes.
Did you know that the number one vehicle manufacturer on the planet is in fact Hot Wheels? I did.

Speaker 2 It kind of, it's astounding until you stop and think about it. Sure.
Like, apparently, since 1968, when Hot Hot Wheels were first introduced, more than 4 billion Hot Wheels have been produced.

Speaker 2 That's more than the big four Detroit automakers combined. You're like, wow.
And then you think, oh, yeah, it costs a minute fraction of the cost to build a Hot Wheels than it does a normal car.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Plus, also, it's not like you're going to go, I want this

Speaker 2 Buick Cutlass Supreme in every color it comes in. Right.
You know? With the Hot Wheels, you can do that.

Speaker 3 Yeah, what's the the Lego stat? Is they're the biggest manufacturer of tires?

Speaker 2 Yeah, they're yeah.

Speaker 3 I wonder, though, do these not count as tires because they're plastic? They count as wheels?

Speaker 2 I don't know, man.

Speaker 3 Because four billion times four, that's 16 billion tires.

Speaker 2 That's a really great question.

Speaker 3 I might have to challenge Lego or maybe just look up how many tires they manufacture.

Speaker 2 Old Kirk Christensen is not going to be happy about this. Who was that? The founder of Lego.
Oh. Remember, Ole? Oh, yeah, that's right.

Speaker 3 I thought you were saying old.

Speaker 2 No, old. Yeah, Oliver Ol.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 let's talk about the history of this stuff, huh? Okay. So Hot Wheels, like I said, have been around since 1968.

Speaker 2 And anybody who's heard the Barbie Trademark podcast will recognize the name Elliot Handler. That's Ruth Handler, the inventor of Barbie Trademark's husband.
Sure.

Speaker 2 And Elliot apparently saw

Speaker 2 a

Speaker 2 real chance to muscle in on an already extant market by a company called Tycho that had a line of miniature metal cars, die-cast cars is what they're called, called Matchbox cars. That's right.

Speaker 2 By the time Hot Wheels came around, Matchbox was already there and had established a market. And Mattel said, let's get in on that.

Speaker 3 Yeah, and the rumor is that he saw his grandchildren playing with them and said,

Speaker 3 they kind of stink. I can make these better, cooler.

Speaker 3 And he had a, as the story goes, had a designer, which we'll talk about in a second, called Harry Bradley. Sure.
And he had a hot rod.

Speaker 3 And Elliot was in the parking lot one day and said, man, those are some hot wheels you got there.

Speaker 2 And apparently, if you go look at the old original commercials for hot wheels. Did they say that?

Speaker 2 Well, that's how they pronounce it. Hot wheels.

Speaker 3 Oh, instead of hot wheels? Yeah.

Speaker 2 The emphasis is on the hot. It sounds awkward.
They're like, race your hot wheels. You can make sense of them.
You can race them. Just go buy some hot wheels.

Speaker 2 That's how they say it. Collect all your hot wheels.

Speaker 3 Yeah, but that makes more sense in the context of a sentence.

Speaker 2 It does, but having been raised

Speaker 2 is wrong. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Hot wheels.

Speaker 3 Hot wheels. Now I'm trying to picture the guy in the parking lot saying, those are some hot wheels you got on your there.

Speaker 3 You'd say hot Wheels you got there.

Speaker 2 You know? Yeah.

Speaker 3 Oh boy, we can sure waste some time. We sure can.

Speaker 3 But the first, in 1968, is like you said, when the first line came out of 16 Hot Wheels,

Speaker 3 they were sold initially for 59 cents a piece.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and like you said, the guy whose car originally inspired the name Hot Wheels

Speaker 2 was Harry Bradley, and he was the designer of that first 16 cars. They were also called

Speaker 2 California Customs Miniatures was that first original 16 group of hot wheels that were released in 1968.

Speaker 2 So and Harry Bradley designed them all including apparently he got his hands on the first one by the way that came out was a Chevy Camaro. Of course.

Speaker 2 The second one that came out was the Chevy Corvette. Of course.
And apparently the Chevy Corvette came out before the actual Corvette came out.

Speaker 3 Yeah, the 69 Corvette, that is.

Speaker 2 So Harry Bradley was an old hand in not just miniature car design, but car design in general. He was an old GM designer, and I guess he had connections still at GM and

Speaker 2 probably

Speaker 2 under the table in a possibly illegal way, got his hands on the blueprints for the Corvette that hadn't been released yet. And Hot Wheels beat GM to the punch in releasing the 1968 Corvette.

Speaker 3 Yeah, 69.

Speaker 3 Thank you. That's all right.

Speaker 3 Yeah, as the lore goes, he supposedly knew that the cafeteria door was unlocked, so he snuck in through the cafeteria door.

Speaker 2 That's called industrial espionage.

Speaker 3 Yeah, that sounds like a story, like just lore.

Speaker 2 Okay. But maybe so.

Speaker 3 Maybe he's committed industrial espionage. Yeah.

Speaker 3 So, like you said,

Speaker 3 those were the two of the first 16. in that original lineup, that original collection, which if you have any of those.

Speaker 2 Yeah,

Speaker 3 yeah, you got some money that you're sitting on.

Speaker 2 Because I mean, like, they went all out on those that original line. Oh, yeah.
Like, there were bushings to the suspension. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I mean, the chassis.

Speaker 2 It had suspension, like, shocks. Like, you could press them down and it would bounce back.

Speaker 3 I had some of those. I don't know.
I think they were from 68, but... When did they quit making those? It said up until...

Speaker 2 77 was when they stopped making the

Speaker 3 70 is when the suspension got an overhaul.

Speaker 2 Okay, so for the first couple years, like they were really putting a lot into these things.

Speaker 2 The tires were red line racing slicks. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And the things, the whole reason they went to so much trouble is because they really wanted to destroy their competitor Matchbox. And one of the ways they did that was...

Speaker 2 by making these things far more functional than the matchboxes were. The matchbox cars were.
So

Speaker 2 they really could race.

Speaker 2 And if you put a matchbox car up against a comparable Hot Wheels, say the same model car,

Speaker 2 the Hot Wheels will destroy it every time in the head-to-head race.

Speaker 3 As we saw on the internet, a guy did that, of course. He took two Volkswagens and two Audi 8s, I think,

Speaker 3 and one matchbox and one Hot Wheel. And he said they won by at least a car length every time he tried.

Speaker 3 And this was no loop-de-loop or anything. It was just the straight race.

Speaker 3 They painted them originally in Spectra Flame, which was very shiny and sparkly and expensive.

Speaker 3 And I don't think we said that all Hot Wheels are built at 164th scale. Yeah, that's a big point.
But not necessarily all Matchbot cars. They kind of vary here and there.
Right.

Speaker 3 But, like you said, that Spectra Flame and the Red Line tires only last until 77.

Speaker 3 And the suspension only lasted until 1970.

Speaker 3 And they sadly, a lot of that had had to do with the fact that they moved them from Hawthorne, California to Hong Kong.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 3 And like any product, you're like, hey, you can make it for half as much if you make it in China. So let's move, let's ship the operations overseas.

Speaker 2 Well, not only that, it's the Spectra Flame Pain is pretty expensive. It's awesome.
It looks great. But it's pretty expensive.
So

Speaker 2 with any collector's item, as they started to downgrade the components and the parts and the manufacturing, And ultimately, the final product, all that did was make the original stuff all the more valuable today.

Speaker 2 Yeah, because there's fewer and fewer of them as the years go on, proportionately speaking.

Speaker 3 Yeah, they had actual axles.

Speaker 3 They were designed by car designers and they were made apparently to reach 200 scale miles per hour.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's pretty cool. That's way cool.
Yeah, remember, like in the cockroach episode, we talked about how they're the fastest animal on the planet, relatively speaking?

Speaker 2 Pretty neat stuff. Yeah.

Speaker 2 So, Chuck, right out of the gate, Mattel had a hit on his hands. Oh, yes.

Speaker 2 They released them in 1968. By 1970, Hot Wheels was a Saturday morning cartoon in the vein of like Dune Buggy and Scooby-Doo and all those guys, Hanna-Barbera.
Dunebuggy? Or Speed Buggy. Speed Buggy?

Speaker 2 Yeah. Remember Speed Buggy? Uh-uh.
Yeah, it was like a Dune Buggy that could talk, and it was basically... Wonderbug? No, it's Speed Buggy.
Oh, okay.

Speaker 2 Because there's Wonderbug, too. If you took Shaggy and put some racing goggles on him

Speaker 2 and then turned Scooby-Doo into

Speaker 2 a Doombuggy, that's Speed Buggy.

Speaker 3 Oh, was that a cartoon?

Speaker 2 Yeah. Okay.
They went around solving mysteries and stuff like that.

Speaker 3 Yeah, Wonderbug was...

Speaker 3 I think that was live action.

Speaker 2 Oh, this was a cartoon.

Speaker 3 Sid Marty Croft.

Speaker 2 This is exactly like Scooby-Doo by the people who did Scooby-Doo using the same people who did the voices for Scooby-Doo.

Speaker 2 It just vaguely changed the characters. Hot Wheels was virtually the same thing, except it was about racing clubs.
There were the bad guys and the good guys and do you know what this proves?

Speaker 3 What? Is the 1970s, the Doombuggy was a very popular thing.

Speaker 3 You remember seeing those on the road? Mm-hmm. Like, I used to see them all the time.
Not all the time, but in the 70s, it was a common thing. Yeah.
You don't see them anymore.

Speaker 2 Very rarely. Nope.

Speaker 3 No gremlins, no Yugos, no Wonderbugs.

Speaker 2 You know, I like gremlins. Do you?

Speaker 2 They're okay. For me, though, the coup de grace of car design is the AMC Pacer.
Yeah. It's like the Formica kitchen of cars.
Yeah. It's beautiful in all the weirdest ways.

Speaker 3 So much window.

Speaker 2 That would be my sought-after Hot Wheels. If I had a Hot Wheels, if I just could have one Hot Wheel.
Yeah. It would, I don't know if that would be it.

Speaker 2 I'd be happy with that one. Now, do they have that as a Hot Wheel?

Speaker 4 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 3 Okay.

Speaker 2 And if you look up AMC Gremlin Hot Wheels, they went to town on those. They had some with like the intakes like sticking out of the hood and

Speaker 2 just all sorts of just awesome different variations like indie car gremlins and stuff like that. Yeah.
Because and that raises a pretty good point. Hot wheels has always been about the racing design.

Speaker 2 Like they've designed them to look like racing cars, but they've also manufactured them to actually be able to win a race like we talked about with Matchbox.

Speaker 3 Yeah, and one of the differences, that is one of the main differences between the matchbox and the hot wheel is they were just much more interested in being sportier like you could get you could get a matchbox like a delivery truck right you know they they had that and but the matchboxes looked more real they they all were about looking realistic right and not necessarily performance yeah um and hey if you want a bread truck you can get a bread truck right exactly but you can't get a bread truck hot wheel right you know uh we'll talk more about all of this jam right after this.

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Speaker 3 You want to go ahead and talk about some of the other differences between Matchbox and Hot Wheel?

Speaker 2 Yeah, sure. Since we're at it.

Speaker 3 Matchbox, or I'm sorry, Hot Wheel is the one that is more likely to have

Speaker 3 branded versions.

Speaker 2 Oh, man, and do they ever?

Speaker 3 Like the Ghostbusters Ectomobile. Right.

Speaker 2 Or even more than that, like they have a deal with MM Mars for 2015. Oh, they do.
So they have like a Twix trucks and a Skittles van and like all this stuff.

Speaker 2 They have licensing with DC and Marvel this year.

Speaker 3 Fast and the Furious. I know they had a line.
Yep.

Speaker 2 So they're really big time into branded. And a lot of times they'll have like a store will just have exclusives

Speaker 2 access to an exclusive line of Skittles cars or something like that that you can only get at KB Toys.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I think they have a NASCAR deal too, if I'm not mistaken.

Speaker 2 I would not be surprised.

Speaker 3 And the Hot Wheels usually have a little bit wider, a longer axle and wider wheels

Speaker 3 because it's just cooler if that wheel sticks out from the body a little bit, you know.

Speaker 2 Well, plus also, supposedly, and we'll talk about this a little more, when you shrink a car down to scale, it looks a little weird.

Speaker 3 Yeah, you might as well go ahead and bring that up.

Speaker 2 Okay. It looks weird.

Speaker 3 You can't just shrink it and have it in the same proportion and have it look normal.

Speaker 2 Right. Like it'll be

Speaker 2 as far as like shrinking a car down by scale. It will be in the exact same proportion, but it's just off a little bit.

Speaker 2 Like, so what they do to make a Hot Wheels raceable is they expand the wheel well a little more. Yeah.
They break it out a little bit. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Which is why the wheels stick out some on a on a Hot Wheels, but not on a matchbox. That's right.
Because matchboxes are all about realism. To heck with how it looks, as long as it's real.

Speaker 3 One of my favorite ones, and I had one of these that they mentioned in this article was the Red Baron.

Speaker 3 The person who wrote this said it was an inexplicable, an inexplicably cool helmet over the cockpit.

Speaker 3 I don't know about inexplicable. It was just the roof of the car was a helmet.

Speaker 3 But I looked it up again today and I was like, oh yeah, I had that thing. But it was,

Speaker 3 it wasn't a Nazi helmet per se, but it was that shape of the helmet. All right.

Speaker 3 Like the U.S. soldiers have that shape now, you know, where it's cut lower around the ears

Speaker 3 instead of just a straight, you know, like the World War II helmet. Right.
But the Nazis used those first, you know, because it's a better design for war.

Speaker 3 And it also had a black iron cross on the side of it.

Speaker 2 Well, hence the Red Baron, right?

Speaker 3 Yeah, but it was,

Speaker 3 it's easy now as an adult to look and say, hmm, that looks like a little Nazi hot rod.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but the red baron was world war one he was pre-nazi germany yeah and it was also i think at the time just like uh looked like the biker gang sure uh would wear like those helmet with the iron cross yeah and all of it was southern california hot rod culture yeah is what gave rise to hot wheels so it makes sense yeah i don't i don't think there was any like uh surreptitious uh intent yeah um

Speaker 2 so like i said right out of the gate hot wheels was a hit they had a cartoon within a year or so of the first 16 being released. Sure.

Speaker 2 The second release, they had, I think, 22 new cars.

Speaker 3 Yeah, 33 total.

Speaker 2 And then the third year, they had another, they released 33 after that, right?

Speaker 3 Oh, no, no, yeah, I'm sorry, 33 by 1970.

Speaker 2 So they did 16, 24, and then 33, and all of them came in like different colors, right? So like I said, if you had one, that didn't mean you had them all. You wanted to collect them all.

Speaker 2 So kids were going crazy for it. And another way that Mattel very wisely targeted children was to get in with fast food.

Speaker 2 In 1970, the first Hot Wheels came out as a toy at Jack in the Boxes. Oh, really? Yeah.

Speaker 2 The big one, though, the one that put them over the top, was in 1983 when kids who were lucky enough to be taken to McDonald's for dinner.

Speaker 3 A happy meal.

Speaker 2 To get a

Speaker 2 hot wheel. Which is what they called them at the time.

Speaker 2 where could get one of 14 hot wheels yeah in 1983 and they had some cool ones they had a chevy citation did they really yeah they had one that was one of my favorites actually it was a um toyota mini trek which is a like a station wagon camper and it even said painted on the side good time camper

Speaker 2 that you could get in your happy meal which if i could have one

Speaker 3 hot wheel it would probably be that you know what they were doing now that i look back through my adult eyes?

Speaker 2 Like snorting pot?

Speaker 3 No, they were giving you a bunch of crappy ones because you wanted to keep coming back to get the cool one.

Speaker 2 Yeah, probably.

Speaker 3 You're like, ah, I got a citation. I'm like, can I go back? Because I want to get the hot rod.
Right. That's exactly what they were doing.
Sure. Man, I feel so like manipulated.

Speaker 2 What did you think they were doing with Happy Meals?

Speaker 3 Well, I mean, I know it was all manipulation to get you to try and own all of them.

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 3 But they should have been all cool ones, but you can't do that because the regular kid might be like, no, I got the cool one. I'm fine.
But if you get the citation,

Speaker 3 you feel gipped off and you really want to go back and get one of the hot rods. Yeah.

Speaker 3 It's

Speaker 3 my eyes are wide open, my friend.

Speaker 2 Well, that's why our friends down under in Australia have like outlawed marketing directly to children, which I think is a fantastic moment. Oh, really?

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's so unfair to market directly to children. It's just, it almost literally is like taking candy from a baby.
Right.

Speaker 2 Like kids aren't sophisticated enough to psychologically defend themselves from being like bombarded

Speaker 2 by adults to say, go tell your parents to buy you this. You can't function correctly without this Trapper Keeper.
So go get it.

Speaker 3 The Trapper Keeper. Yeah.
What, did they make a law?

Speaker 2 Yeah. Really? Yeah, it's a big one.
It's a very progressive law. It's a big all countries should adopt.

Speaker 3 Well, in 1983, I agree wholeheartedly, by the way. In 1983 is when that happy meal thing happened.
And also the same year they moved from Hong Kong to Malaysia.

Speaker 3 And it said that's when they added their economy cars. So that must have coincided with the citation.

Speaker 2 Yeah. The citation, man.

Speaker 2 One of the most disappointing Happy Meal toys you could possibly get.

Speaker 3 Yeah, because

Speaker 3 it reminded you of your dad who drove a citation.

Speaker 2 Right. Who was always mad.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 Oh dear.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 Chuckers. Yes.

Speaker 2 After 1983, not a lot happened. Hot Wheels just kept going on, expanding more and more and more.

Speaker 2 I think they had another Happy Meals joint in 91 or something like that.

Speaker 2 And in 1995, they said,

Speaker 2 we need to do something big. And they did.
They released something called a Treasure Hunt series, which was a purposefully limited-release car, series of cars.

Speaker 2 I think they did

Speaker 2 12 models at 10,000 each originally,

Speaker 2 and hence the name Treasure Hunt. They were hard to find.

Speaker 3 Yeah, and one of the cooler ones for me was the Oldsmobile 442.

Speaker 2 Yeah, the thing is neat.

Speaker 3 A dude at my church had a 442,

Speaker 3 and

Speaker 3 it was just awesome, man. He had like the only muscle car in the youth group.
And

Speaker 2 years,

Speaker 3 like two years ago, my brother, I was talking about this dude, Jason Singleton. I was like, whatever happened to him? He's like, oh, he still lives in so-and-so.
And he went, and you know what, dude?

Speaker 3 I went, no. He went, he still got it.
Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2 Why would you get rid of it?

Speaker 3 He still has the car. I went to his Facebook page, and it is like the center of his life.
I'm sure. It's his baby.
I mean, he's had that thing since like 1986. And just it's juiced up.

Speaker 3 And he used to scare the daylights out of me in that thing, but it was also exhilarating, you know, to be riding with him.

Speaker 3 And he, you know, like 200 feet of drag, he would lay quite power breaking, and he would get like four sets of tires a year.

Speaker 2 He'd be in the passenger seat going, save me, Jesus.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I was very scared because I was, you know, I didn't flirt with the wild side back then. No.

Speaker 2 The Oldsmobile 442 is as close as you got, huh? Yep. It was exhilarating.
And then, so that was 1995. This treasure hunt thing kind of went.

Speaker 2 It didn't go exactly as planned. Mattel was like, oh, we could make even more money if we put these into wider release.
Yeah. So the original 10,000 releases were redone again and again and again.

Speaker 2 So treasure hunt kind of became commonplace. Sure.
But it was a good idea. And it tapped into this whole idea of collecting.

Speaker 2 Like Mattel was like, we know you're out there and we're going to design these just for you.

Speaker 2 And we'll talk more about collectors.

Speaker 2 But just to kind of button up the history of Hot Wheels, it all came full circle in 1996

Speaker 2 when Mattel bought Tycho and hence Hot Wheels bought Matchbox.

Speaker 3 So they're all owned by Mattel at this point.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 3 All right, we'll get to the design and collecting right after this.

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Speaker 2 So

Speaker 3 back then, if you wanted to do a smaller version of a larger car and scale it down,

Speaker 3 you didn't have computer-aided design and stuff.

Speaker 3 Sometimes you might have had a blueprint, which helped, but sometimes you just had to get out there in the parking lot with the tape measure and just take some measurements and then,

Speaker 3 you know, be good at math.

Speaker 2 Right. Basically.
And like, like we said, Harry Bradley, who's the daddy of the Hot Wheels designs, who's the guy who did the first 16, he was a GM designer originally.

Speaker 2 In his footsteps, he followed Howard Rees, and then after that, Larry Wood. And those are some of the legendary Hot Wheels designers.

Speaker 3 That's the Mount Rushmore of Hot Wheels.

Speaker 2 Pretty much, yeah.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 yeah, they would just literally go out and measure these things. And that was one way that Hot Wheels were born.

Speaker 2 Another way was that, and this definitely differentiates Hot Wheels from Matchbox, is that there are Hot Wheels that only exist in the Hot Wheels world.

Speaker 3 Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 They are called the fantasy cars. They're just the designer's imagination come to life.
Right.

Speaker 3 Whereas Matchbox only, I believe, has red trucks.

Speaker 3 Exactly. Well, they only have cars that are based on real cars, right?

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 2 Hot Wheels has a whole fantasy line.

Speaker 3 It's interesting that they're owned by the same company still and they just have kept that distinction.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 3 You know?

Speaker 3 I guess some people are matchbox kids and some kids are Hot Wheels kids.

Speaker 2 I had both, I think.

Speaker 3 I had a bread truck.

Speaker 2 Is that why you keep going to the bread truck well?

Speaker 3 No, I didn't have a bread truck, but I do remember having a couple of like weird utility type vehicles

Speaker 3 that I don't remember. They were probably gifts or stocking stuffers or something.
I don't think I like sought it out.

Speaker 2 I was always into Tonka trucks. I thought Tonka was great.
They were obviously much bigger, but those were like construction vehicles, like dump trucks and stuff like that. And still today,

Speaker 2 that Volvo dump truck, the giant one

Speaker 2 with the huge wheels, I think is one of the coolest vehicles ever created.

Speaker 2 I think I had one of those when I was a kid.

Speaker 3 I didn't have a lot of Tonka stuff.

Speaker 3 One of my favorite Hot Wheels, though, was the Little Red Express truck.

Speaker 2 I don't remember that.

Speaker 3 If you saw it, it might ring a bell. It was basically,

Speaker 3 I can't remember what kind of truck it was i think it was a dodge but it was just a cool red stepside pickup truck and it had the two uh the two vertical mufflers on each side that went up above the truck i think i know what you're talking about yeah yeah it's really cool and if you go to the um

Speaker 3 the uh peterson automotive museum in la oh yeah they have a really cool exhibit there that i haven't been to in person but i was looking at it online a permanent exhibit where they have the real-life versions of the hot wheel cars, and they have a little red express truck, a full-size one.

Speaker 3 Yeah, and I saw it, and I was like, whoa.

Speaker 2 Did you just die from nostalgia?

Speaker 2 Might have teared up a little bit at the desk.

Speaker 3 But they have, you know, the

Speaker 3 gussied up Corvettes with the big chrome engines coming out of the hood.

Speaker 2 Do they have the 442?

Speaker 3 I don't know if they have the 442, but I'm very. They will when your friend dies.

Speaker 2 I'll bet it's in his will.

Speaker 3 It'll go straight to the museum.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 3 I'm going to go to this thing, though, at some some point. I don't know on this next LA trip or not, but it's right there near the La Brea Tar Pits, I think.

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 3 So I want to go check it out. Been there.

Speaker 2 Yeah. It's neat.

Speaker 3 It is neat.

Speaker 3 But back to the design. These days, you're not going to need a tape measure and stuff like that.
You're going to Photoshop

Speaker 3 designs and you're going to even get a 3D printer to maybe do your prototype.

Speaker 2 That had to have helped them tremendously. Oh, yeah.
Because, you know,

Speaker 2 if you're designing real-life cars and you have a 3D printer, that's pretty handy. But with Hot Wheels, you can print out pretty much exactly what it's going to look like.

Speaker 2 And once they have

Speaker 2 the prototype done,

Speaker 2 they'll make a mold out of it and then inject it with molten metal under tremendous pressure.

Speaker 2 And that's why it's called die cast. You create a die that you cast all of the ensuing ones from.

Speaker 3 Yeah, and I think they're made with less metal than they used to be.

Speaker 3 But they still have metal components, right? Oh, yeah. I haven't seen a new one in a while.

Speaker 2 I haven't either, but I'm almost positive they do. And apparently, they're still about like a dollar.
Oh, really?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I was on the Hot Wheels Collector site today, and they kept making reference to about a dollar.

Speaker 2 So, just what's called the mainline. Yeah.
The ones that they make en masse.

Speaker 3 The citation.

Speaker 2 Exactly.

Speaker 2 I'll bet if you got your hands on that 1983 citation, it'd be worth a few bucks. You're right.
But they kept referring to the mainline stuff as about a dollar.

Speaker 3 Well, they just kept making their manufacturing cheaper and cheaper, so they've maintained that cost, I guess. Yeah.

Speaker 3 So as far as collecting goes,

Speaker 3 the most valuable, and that is not this crazy one made out of diamonds for the 40th anniversary, which we'll talk about in a minute, but the most valuable regular hot wheel is the

Speaker 3 68 Beach Bomb, which was a VW bus in hot pink. that had real surfboards sticking out of the back of it.

Speaker 2 Yeah, originally they only released, I think, 25 of them like that. There were a couple of problems.

Speaker 2 It was difficult to manufacture them with the surfboards sticking out of the back, even though it was more realistic. Sure.
And it also was terrible on like a loop-de-loop track. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Because I guess the surfboards would either weigh them down or it would get stuck.

Speaker 2 So they only made just a few of these things.

Speaker 2 The beach bomb that was the highest selling

Speaker 2 the Hot Wheels ever was a pink one.

Speaker 2 They made even fewer of those because apparently a lot of boys were like, oh no, I'm playing with some pink van, even if it does have cool surfboards sticking out of the back.

Speaker 2 So the thing sold for like, I think 70 something, $75,000 in 2000. Yeah.
And it has since sold again. In 2011, I saw in like LA magazine for like $125,000.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 It's a lot of money for a tiny little car. Yeah, it is.

Speaker 2 And that's the highest one ever. Apparently, by a long shot, too.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 I mean, I've seen others that were worth like 10 grand and stuff. Like, I think one of those 442 originals is like 10 grand.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I guess like 1970 mongoose or Cobra are worth about 10 grand these days.

Speaker 2 And a lot of them, just like with any collector's item, you'll see

Speaker 2 if there was just a few of them made, obviously they're going to be worth a lot more.

Speaker 2 If there was something where they adjusted the design, like for example, the Python was originally called the Cheetah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And then they found out that a real-life executive with real-life lawyers at GM owned the name Cheetah. Yeah.
Because apparently GM executives just own names for cars that could potentially be used.

Speaker 3 Like every fast animal name.

Speaker 2 Right, exactly.

Speaker 2 So they changed it to the Python, but

Speaker 2 that was after they'd started manufacturing the Cheetah. So there's some out there that say Cheetah

Speaker 2 stamped on the bottom. And if you have one of those, it's worth ten grand.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it's funny to think about it's the same with Star Wars.

Speaker 3 Like, sometimes the mistake ones are the ones that are super valuable because, like, there was some recall, but they're like, oh, but you want that one

Speaker 3 because the Boba Fett's rocket really shot out before kids started choking on them.

Speaker 2 Right. Or catching on fire.

Speaker 3 Yeah, and that's the one you want.

Speaker 3 But like you said, it's all about scarcity and supply and demand.

Speaker 2 Dude, this whole thing has reminded me of a really great gallery I put together about hilarious knockoff toys. Ooh, that's a good one.
Yeah, go to stuffyushouldknow.com and look that up.

Speaker 2 It's pretty awesome.

Speaker 2 There's some really strange interpretations of beloved toys, including Star Wars toys, that people who make counterfeit toys come up with to try to skirt trademark law, maybe or something, or else they just fully don't understand the toy and what its allure is, so they just make it in this weird interpretation.

Speaker 2 It's pretty hilarious stuff. Yeah, it's a good one.

Speaker 3 We'll post that again.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 3 And then I did mention the diamond studded one.

Speaker 3 i always think these things are just ridiculous but um

Speaker 3 but like to take any like the diamond studded bras was worth you know oh yeah i forgot a million bucks i just always think it's kind of dumb but they did make a 40th anniversary in uh edition in 19 i'm sorry in 2008 with uh 2700 little diamonds and rubies for taillights and uh black diamonds for the tires and all that stuff 18 karat white gold body but um it's worth

Speaker 3 cost $140,000 to put together.

Speaker 2 But I'm sure. It's gaudy.
It's a gaudy Hot Wheels. Yeah.
The car is cool. It looks like Mad Max's car.

Speaker 3 Oh, is that a picture of it?

Speaker 2 Yeah. I don't think I saw that.
Can you identify that car?

Speaker 2 What is that?

Speaker 3 It looks familiar.

Speaker 2 It does look familiar to me.

Speaker 3 It's sort of like a DeLorean, but I don't think it is.

Speaker 2 I don't think so either. No.

Speaker 3 Man, that new Mad Max looks good, though.

Speaker 2 Are they remaking Mad Max?

Speaker 3 Well, there's a new

Speaker 3 reboot, I guess, is what they call it these days. Cool.

Speaker 2 Who's in it?

Speaker 3 What's his face that played Bane?

Speaker 3 Who's it? Yeah.

Speaker 3 Tom, what's his face? Huddleston?

Speaker 2 No, not Tom Huddleston.

Speaker 3 But it looks, it's the same director.

Speaker 2 Tom Hardy?

Speaker 3 Yeah, Tom Hardy. But it's the same director from all the Mad Max series.

Speaker 3 Oh, really?

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah. Wow.

Speaker 3 And it just looks,

Speaker 3 it's supposed to be just like one long,

Speaker 3 intense chase battle.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Sounds a lot like a Mad Max movie. Yep.
That's what you want. Have you ever seen Vanishing Point?

Speaker 2 I think so. What is that? It was like,

Speaker 2 man, I can't remember the car, but the car was basically the star. It was one long car chase from like, I think

Speaker 2 Colorado to California. Yeah, I remember that.
That's a good one. From the 70s.

Speaker 3 Yeah, two-lane black top shoot.

Speaker 2 Challenger? That's another black top. Challenger.
The car. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I haven't seen that one.

Speaker 3 Yeah, that's a good one. That one weirdly had James Taylor in it

Speaker 3 when he was young and on drugs and cool.

Speaker 2 Were they apologizing to France?

Speaker 3 No, I don't know what the deal was.

Speaker 2 Did you hear about that? No. So that whole Charlie Hebdo

Speaker 2 solidarity march, the U.S. sent like, I think the assistant deputy in charge of the USDA or something like that.

Speaker 2 So to apologize, John Kerry had

Speaker 2 James Taylor go to France to perform You've Got a Friend

Speaker 2 for the French government.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Just talk about making it embarrassing. I know, isn't it?

Speaker 3 Send Guns N' Roses or something, at least.

Speaker 3 Well, not send Guns N' Roses from 1988.

Speaker 2 That would be a good gift. Guns n'roses, man.
Ooh.

Speaker 2 One more thing about collecting. If you wanted to be the coolest collector of Hot Wheels on the planet, you would have to build a a time machine and go back to 1987 to my hometown of Toledo, Ohio,

Speaker 2 which is where the first ever Hot Wheels convention, collector's convention was held. I really wish I would have gone to that.
Because I was there at the time. What year was it? 87.
Oh yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3 I can't believe we sent James Taylor. I'm still just like,

Speaker 3 I can't focus on anything.

Speaker 2 Well, if you want to know more about James Taylor or Hot Wheels or just about anything there is in the universe, you can type it into the search bar at housestuffworks.com and since I said search bar it's time for listener mail.

Speaker 3 I'm gonna call this

Speaker 3 minimum wage argument. Not argument, proposal.
All right.

Speaker 3 I listened to how homelessness works from quite a few years ago and you guys commented that part of the problem was that low minimum wage in comparison to cost of renting a two-bedroom apartment, you'd have to work something like 87 per hours, even 87 hours per week to afford it, with the implication we need to raise minimum wage.

Speaker 3 After hearing this, a clear solution occurred to me. I think disagreements on raising minimum wage is a result of simple misunderstanding.

Speaker 3 On the raise side, people believe this wage should be set at a level that would allow someone to raise a few children and live a modest but reasonably comfortable level, or at least a safe level.

Speaker 3 On the don't raise it side, people believe minimum wage is just a starting point for working,

Speaker 3 like for teenagers at their summer job or after school. This side believes workers should, were never intended to and should not expect to be able to support a family that pays minimum wage.

Speaker 3 So here's my solution.

Speaker 3 Since we're a democracy here, let's just decide what it is supposed to accomplish and then set it at the appropriate level to do that.

Speaker 3 If we decide as a nation that someone should be able to raise a family, rent a two-bedroom apartment while earning a wage, minimum wage, let's just figure out what that would cost and set the wage there, figure in rent, clothing, food, utilities, transportation, etc.

Speaker 3 Let's say it's $27,000 per year, then set it at that rate.

Speaker 3 On the other hand, if we as a nation decide that minimum wage is just a starting point and not meant to support a family, it's intended for people with no work history or experience and low to no marketable skills, and we need to set minimum wage at a relatively low level and let the market, the free market, will ultimately determine the wage for entry-level workers.

Speaker 3 And workers historically have been able to increase compensation by gaining skills and good work history.

Speaker 3 With this settled, any argument about setting minimum wage at a living wage would be mistaken because we all just decided that people are not meant to live on minimum wage and certainly not meant to support a family.

Speaker 3 That is from Joe Prohaska in Reno, Nevada.

Speaker 3 And it's interesting. I look forward to seeing the rebuttal emails.

Speaker 2 Yeah. I love that kind of stuff.
Yeah. It's a great proposal.
I mean,

Speaker 2 I think that is what it's based on. Sure.
But as far as I know, the cost of living calculations are really out of date. Yeah.
And take a lot of stuff into account that doesn't really apply any longer.

Speaker 3 Plus, regardless of what you think it should or should not be, the fact is adults with two kids are still going to be working these jobs. It's not just going to be teenagers looking to advance.

Speaker 2 But it would be nice to put that issue to bed, to say, like, this is what we're trying to achieve, or this is not what we're trying to achieve. Right.
At the very least, to get everybody talking.

Speaker 3 Yeah, because should some teenager at his first job make like $14 an hour? I don't know. I don't know if that's sending the right message either.

Speaker 2 I don't know.

Speaker 2 I don't know. We'll leave it up to you guys, our dear listeners.

Speaker 3 When I started working, it was like three bucks an hour or something. It was ridiculously low.

Speaker 2 That is ridiculously low.

Speaker 2 If you want to let us know how you feel about Joe's proposal, was it Joe?

Speaker 2 I believe it was Joe. Reno Joe?

Speaker 3 Reno Joe.

Speaker 2 You can tweet to us at SYSK Podcast. You can post it on facebook.com slash stuffy should know.
You can put it in an email at stuffpodcast at how howstuffworks.com.

Speaker 2 And just for kicks, you can hang around our home on the web, stuffyushouldknow.com.

Speaker 1 For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com.

Speaker 3 Hey, friends, just want to let you know our friends at Squarespace have partnered with the dude, Jeff Bridges, in a really cool thing called www.dreamingwithjeff.com.

Speaker 3 And this is something Jeff Bridges actually came up with.

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Speaker 3 And he's also the face of No Kid Hungry, which is a great charity group you should look into. So check out www.dreamingwithjeff.com and see what the dude in Squarespace has going on.

Speaker 8 From renewable energy companies with high-free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year, you can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work.

Speaker 15 It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one-of-a-kind index, and lets you backtest it against the S ⁇ P 500.

Speaker 15 Go to public.com slash podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio.

Speaker 19 That's public.com slash podcast.

Speaker 20 Paid for by Public Investing. Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc.
member FINRA and SIPC.

Speaker 21 Advisory Services by Public Advisors LLC, SEC Registered Advisor.

Speaker 22 Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool.

Speaker 23 Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice.

Speaker 3 Living with an autoimmune condition isn't easy, and every journey is different.

Speaker 3 That's why season 5 of Untold Stories, Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition from Ruby Studio and Argenix shares powerful first-hand stories from people with conditions like MG and CIDP.

Speaker 3 Hosted by Martine Hackett, these conversations dive into what resilience really looks like through setbacks, breakthroughs, and finding strength in community.

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Speaker 4 Hey folks, it's that time of year to connect with the people you love, even if they live a few states away. And here's a fun stuff you should should know style fact.

Speaker 4 Hearing someone's voice can trigger a similar emotional response as a hug. Brains are wild.
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