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May 23, 2023 43 mins

Remember toy cars? Ben, Noel and Max investigate the surprisingly weird evolution of old-school, die-cast car models from their origins to the modern day, ultimately asking what happened to the fad. Bonus points for everyone taking a Matchbox or Hot Wheels toy and vrooming-vrooming around as we explore this one.

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous Histories the production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to the

(00:27):
show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much for
tuning in. Let's hear it for the Man, the Myth,
the Legend, Max two Computers, Williams. Let's hear it for
the other miss men and Legends. We've got Noel Brown.
I am Ben Bullen. Noel. This is one that's been

(00:48):
a long time in our docket. We're talking about toy
cars and did you ever have any of those like
racetrack sets where they do the little loop de loop
and so on.

Speaker 2 (01:01):
I had friends I think that had them, and I
would you know, like I had a neighbor in my
Neighborhoodhre I grew up whose parents were doctors, so they
always had like the newest, coolest stuff, and they had
like a whole upstairs that was just entirely this massive
play room. So they had all that kind of stuff
that I never really got. I was more of a
he man Masters of the Universe and eventually Ninja Turtles

(01:22):
kind of kid.

Speaker 3 (01:23):
Maybe so Joe's crept in there, Army crawled in there, but.

Speaker 1 (01:26):
Well, they had so many points of articulation. They were
an excellent action figure.

Speaker 2 (01:31):
Yeah, I mean superior to he Man. He Man was
just like weird stiff arms that you could just.

Speaker 1 (01:35):
Kind of I think shoulders and hips could move.

Speaker 2 (01:39):
I think the hips could swivel because it would let
you do like kind of like punches.

Speaker 1 (01:43):
You known my seat, He's like turning around with the
sword like uh huh, you almost got me.

Speaker 2 (01:50):
Well, there was definitely a figure where his mid section
was like spring loaded and you could hit a button.
You could like cock it and then hit a button
in the back like swing and that was like its
special bower. There were tons of those. I had the
he Man figures. I had some she Raw figures because
my parents wanted me to not think that the he

(02:11):
Man universe was just dudes. And I never understood why
she was she raw instead of like she woman. It's
a good question. I would have loved to be a
fly on the wall in that pitch meeting. But it's
just funny. That was also the time of like highly
gendered toys. Oh now for like I mean practically blue
is for boys, pink as for girls. Kind of thinking

(02:35):
behind the marketing of these things.

Speaker 1 (02:37):
So Matchbox versus hot wheels, that is h This is
probably going to be a two parter. Folks, we have
a heck of a story to tell you. If you
ever loved playing with those toy cars, or if you,
like Nol grew up with someone who had the the
whole racetrack setup. It's a lot like another version of

(03:00):
model trains, which are pal Max's an expert on. You know,
some some kids had these entire racetracks set about a room.
You know, they've got the loop de loops, they got
the wall.

Speaker 2 (03:13):
That's like the room I was describing they had was
all just hardwood floor as far as I could see,
and you could set up an entire universe of tracks
in that place, and they all linked together, and you
could add the little kind of junction points that were
different things.

Speaker 3 (03:27):
It's a whole vibe.

Speaker 1 (03:28):
So our story starts today with two veterans of the
British Naval Forces, Leslie Smith and Rodney Smith. They are
not related they I know, I know, I know, clear, I.

Speaker 3 (03:42):
Mean, there were the probably a lot of Smiths in
the Yukas. Still aren't Smith popular, you know what I mean?
The lastmist last time's actually Smith.

Speaker 1 (03:50):
Yeah, I could tell by the way you move.

Speaker 3 (03:54):
No, I'm just kidding. I like that.

Speaker 2 (03:57):
That's very mysterious, not to speaking for you with Smyth,
you know, because you've got your Patti Smith, and then
you've got your Patty Smyth and never the twain shall
meet Smith does have a y in it, but you
know that's probably more the old English spelling. But the
two of these fellas, Leslie and Rodney, they met during
their time in World War Two, when they, like you said,
were in the Royal Navy. After the war concluded, decided

(04:18):
to start a company which they very cleverly sort of portmanteau.
Their name favors one of them over the other a bit,
but it was called Lesnie Products.

Speaker 1 (04:27):
Otherwise it would be rod Laie, Yeah right, rod Lee.

Speaker 2 (04:30):
Rod Less les Anyway, this is the folks who were
walking through it.

Speaker 1 (04:34):
Leslie, first three letters of that, Rodney, last three letters
of that, Lesnie.

Speaker 2 (04:42):
I guess I'm just saying that the les part is
just a little more striking than the knee part. I
actually had to do a retake because I initially just
said it was named Leslie. When you look at it
on paper, that favors that name. But they started this company.
Whatever the providence of the name in Hackney, which is
a burrow of London's of like Queens to New York
and all of that. And it would specialize in fabricating, right,

(05:05):
like die casting parts that could be used in various
you know workmen like vehicular functions like agriculture or just cars.

Speaker 1 (05:15):
Yeah, they did a lot of stuff. It's interesting because
if you study the evolution of most major automobile manufacturers,
you see that they already typically have a background in
manufacturing something like the people who make the bicycles say, hey,

(05:37):
we know how to make tires. Let's do you know,
let's do cars.

Speaker 3 (05:40):
How tough can it be? Machining or fabricating right? And
it's also funny.

Speaker 2 (05:45):
We'll probably get to this in a bit, but a
lot of companies that went on to become toy companies
got their start and making parts for other stuff. Oh,
it's all about having this setup, having the infrastructure, and
then pivoting right.

Speaker 1 (05:58):
All praise due to nintend Do, which started I think
manufacturing playing cards. So we want to give a big
shout out to Matt Reigel over at grunge dot com
with his work what happened to matchbox Cars? Before we
get to that, we have to explain how Matchbox not
Matchbook cars came to be. As we're saying, Lesnie Products

(06:22):
is a machining interest, and they they do weird innovations
that may not sound like a big deal now, Like
they squish bread such that you can put it on
a fish hook more easily, which I guess was a
big deal.

Speaker 3 (06:41):
I guess that tiny divide.

Speaker 2 (06:43):
I don't understand this, Like gay, you just binch off
a piece of bread and squish it and put it
on the fish. What does this tiny device look like?
I'm trying to We're so close to making lunchables, right.
So this company, Lesnie Products, they rent out part of
their facility to a guy named Jack O'Dell, an engineer.
Eventually he joins the company. He started as a pop

(07:07):
up and now he became part of the industry. Do
you think it's neat though, that they had in these days?
I guess there would be sometimes a little startup mentality,
you know, to something because we've got all this stuff,
we only need this much to meet to you know,
meet our quota for our production. Let's rent out this part,
you know too. I mean maybe this is like super
common and I'm like romanticizing it. But it is kind

(07:27):
of neat to think that like a company like this
would ultimately end up being an incubator.

Speaker 1 (07:31):
You know, I think it's cool. Yeah, and that's a
good word, incubator. Yeah. So soon after Lesnie is founded,
they receive these orders, uh to machine parts for a
small toy gun. They said, Okay, usually we're above it,
but money is money. If we don't have a bunch

(07:52):
of orders coming in from big industries, then we'll work
on whatever kind of stuff we can get. We got
to keep the lights on, We got to pay the
people who work here. The pivot is coming right, The
pivot is on the way, just like that guy who
figured out chewing gum. So Lesnie looks into the toy
market and in nineteen forty eight, that engineer we mentioned earlier,

(08:15):
Jack O'Dell, he designs Lesnie's first Lesnie made toy. It's
an Avelen Barford road roller. It's a direct copy of
a toy car. Oh uh, do you guys know what
an Avelen Barford is.

Speaker 2 (08:34):
It's really but it's very barfee sounding. That's hard, that
does not roll right off the time, but.

Speaker 1 (08:38):
It sounds like a specifically it sounds like a British
euphemism for a specific type of fart.

Speaker 2 (08:45):
That's right, well, or it just it makes me think of,
you know, having won too many pints at the pub
and then you have to barford. But this does your
right though, all that aside, it sounds like an intensely
British vehicle.

Speaker 1 (08:56):
Yeah. They were an engineering company, so they made the
kind of stuff you would see in road traffic construction,
big trucks, basically the big orange yellow construction trucks. And
this other toy manufacturer, Dinky Toy, was the leader in

(09:19):
manufacturing toy cars at the time, and Lesnie, if we're
being honest, kind of plagiarized them.

Speaker 2 (09:27):
And you know, I just occurred to me that this,
I think is kind of a parallel story to the
story we recently did on Japanese toys, and again kind
of companies that were making things for the war effort
pivoting to making copies of popular war vehicles and then
you know, going on from there and using I believe
tin cans and things like that that were left over

(09:48):
from the war effort to make those.

Speaker 1 (09:50):
And they grow with great success. It's nineteen fifty one
and one of the founders decides to leave the company.
Maybe you're onto something nold because the knee of Lesnie
Rodney Smith is the one who leaves. The Lesnie Corporation

(10:13):
keeps the name. They continue with their work. Their next
toy is the Coronation Coach, a mini tour model celebrating
Queen Elizabeth's coronation as Queen of England in June of
nineteen fifty three. That's so crazy because all of the

(10:33):
three of us listening were just Americans while the queen
was the Queen of England.

Speaker 3 (10:42):
She's always kind of been the queen.

Speaker 1 (10:44):
Yeah, It's just always there. He just always knew that
one fact about that country, and now it's changed.

Speaker 2 (10:51):
Yeah, but I mean for even for us though, it
never even occurred to me that there was like an event,
just you know, since she was just always the queen.

Speaker 1 (10:59):
She was there since the island form.

Speaker 4 (11:01):
Precisely, I have to be completely honest. I don't know
the name of the king, the guy who the coronation
just happens.

Speaker 2 (11:08):
Charles is Charles, Okay, I was gonna say Philip famous
Charles with the ears, you know, yeah.

Speaker 3 (11:12):
You know, but I'm sitting here like light right now
doing it live, and I'm like, it's not Philip, that
was her husband.

Speaker 1 (11:18):
No, no, no, it's not Harry.

Speaker 3 (11:19):
That's the one who's Carson Wentz in disguise.

Speaker 1 (11:21):
Yeah, well Knowle's right, it's Charles. He goes by snake
bite with his friends. Obviously, Okay, cool, he's a tough customer.

Speaker 2 (11:31):
But you know it's crazy, Like think about like selling
merch and an event like that. You know, you've ever
been to a giant concert and there's like people selling
like bootleg T shirts outside and stuff. I mean, there
is money to be made around events like this. So
Leslie essentially just totally keys into this exact thing and
hits pay dirt by having the coronation coach like coming
out in sync with this event. It's like feeding frenzy

(11:53):
of an event. Just think about how crazy Americans go
for royal stuff, you know, around either a coronation or
a royal wedding or what have you.

Speaker 3 (12:02):
I mean, in the country. This is an absolute feeding frenzy.

Speaker 1 (12:05):
Oh yeah, it's a beautiful idea and they do a
tremendous job with it. If we look at how these
cars begin, then we're going to need to jump around

(12:27):
a little bit hashtag no criss cross. That is an
old school hip hop joke. All right, Fie missed the bus,
Yeah right. And so the world's first mass market tiny
toy cars date back to nineteen fifty two, which is
kind of weird because we of course know that the

(12:48):
automobile was around way before that. The idea for mass
market tiny cars comes from exploiting a loophole. If you
were a school kid back in the early nineteen fifties,
you could only go to school with toys that were
small enough to fit inside a matchbox. So LESNI keeping

(13:12):
their eye on this, they say, hey, we already have
economy of scale. We can make a car that can
fit inside a match box.

Speaker 3 (13:23):
Oh totally.

Speaker 2 (13:24):
And they sold over a million of those Coronation coaches
so they were rare and to go. So essentially, just
like you know, I don't know if this is a
national policy, Like it seems like the kind of thing
that would be, you know, a specific principles idea, you know,
things like in certain school districts where the length of
a skirt is regulated. But I guess this whole matchbox
thing was nationwide and they kind of like caught wind

(13:46):
of it. And we're like, okay, dude, there's a super
creepy story about it. So we introduced Jack O'Dell. Jack
Odell the engineer who started working in a pop up
at the space and then joined the company.

Speaker 1 (13:59):
Right. He has a daughter, and his daughter has a
thing that she loves to do at school, and she
gets in trouble for it. She takes the matchbox rule
for toys and instead of bringing toys to school, she
brings spiders to what.

Speaker 2 (14:17):
Yeah, she's an amazing is she like a Wednesday Adams
type figure.

Speaker 1 (14:22):
I dream of that.

Speaker 3 (14:23):
She's wearing like black lace.

Speaker 2 (14:25):
Dresses like every Oh my goodness, this is the Gothis
thing I've ever heard go on.

Speaker 1 (14:30):
So little goth Odell is bringing spiders to school. The
school marm, we can imagine, does not love this, and
so jack Odell, her father says, Okay, I'm gonna make
you a little car, and he makes her a little
a tiny replica of a steamroller like you would see

(14:50):
on construction site right, paving roads. And the steamroller is
made of brass, it's painted red and green, and his daughter,
he likes it, and she shows it off to her friends,
assuming she still had friends despite her clear track record

(15:11):
of throwing spiders at children. She had some friends who
I guess were happy that it was a steamroller instead
of a spider. They were also impressed. And you know,
if you can get a kid doing something that impresses
other children, I have it, like.

Speaker 2 (15:30):
I have to have the thing, you know. That's how
Pokemon works. I love though. There's this New York Times
article by Douglas Martin, and there's an amazing kind of
characterization of what Odell's thinking was behind this, that it
was just right for a child's hand, but hard to swallow,

(15:52):
no batteries, violence, free, quiet, and costing just pennies to make.
These are all winners. These are all checking the box
of capitalism right here, my friends. Yeah, hard to swallow,
that's the most important.

Speaker 4 (16:05):
Yeah, it's not like they cannot swallow it, but it's
they would really, you know, yeah, it would exist.

Speaker 1 (16:13):
It's like water resistant or fire resistant. So in just
the space of one year, the steamroller and various iterations
of this vehicle are selling like hotcakes. Lesnie had set
up a small factory inside an abandoned bar in London,

(16:37):
inside an abandoned London pub called The Riflemen, and after
they made the steamroller and that caught on, they made
a land rover. Then they made one of those iconic
London buses. They made a bulldozer, they made a fire truck.
In nineteen fifty four, they already had made nineteen different vehicles,

(16:59):
and their ninth teenth one was a MGTD roadster. This
is considered the first match Box car, and they looked good.
I'm so glad you brought up the earlier example of
the Japanese toy manufacturing industry.

Speaker 2 (17:16):
It's really interesting how like the name of a legacy
company that we just accept as having like always been
around can spring from something so random, you know, like
Matchbox cars. We think of that as you know, we
see the logo with the like the racing stripe and
the little kind of flaming out thing like that. It's
like a ribbon, and you picture the tiny cars, and

(17:38):
it just makes sense, you know, Oh, it's match Box
like like it's small.

Speaker 3 (17:42):
I get it.

Speaker 2 (17:43):
But that kind of branding often isn't just like it
comes from some weird occurrence, and I think.

Speaker 3 (17:48):
That this is a perfect example of that.

Speaker 1 (17:50):
Agreed. Agreed, I mean they were also pretty well made.

Speaker 2 (17:56):
Oh yeah, it comes from machining. I mean, these are
made of metal. These things are like damn near indestructible.
They're the bane of the existence of parents because if
you step on one of those, like heel down, not
only is it gonna hurt, but you might slip and
fall down the stairs to your death.

Speaker 1 (18:11):
It's like a rolling lado. Yeah, so Odell, if we
could talk about some of the production quality. Jack Odell
has designed machines at this point entirely created to make
these tiny toy cars. There's one machine. All it does

(18:35):
it spray paints tiny silver headlights on the models. There's
another one. All it does is bang out the mold
for the interiors. There are dashboard dials. This stuff is
like scale model accurate. Some cars have more than one
hundred parts. We're talking tiny, tiny, like not just tiny

(18:57):
tiny windshield fibers, but little you know, ceiling hooks where
you would hang uh oh yeah, like uh hang out,
hang some laundry.

Speaker 2 (19:05):
And of course all this got dumbed down over time,
you know. But I mean, can you imagine exactly the
precision of this one hundred It's like watchmaker like level
kind of precision.

Speaker 1 (19:16):
To Philip Petique of uh of tiny car toys. I
love it, man, I love it, and I can see
Nola can crpl max here kind of maybe thinking about
model trains, no fence backs. I'm just in your head
a little bit. Well.

Speaker 2 (19:32):
And again not to jump too far ahead, but you know,
obviously this level of quality uh isn't going to last forever.
But then it becomes part of this kind of bespoke
culture of like buying the perfectly you know, machined, exact
replica of like this particular train engine or whatever.

Speaker 1 (19:49):
So this is still a European phenomenon at this point.
Right until the very end of the nineteen fifties, there's
an up and coming guy in the York is very
madman in my head. His name's Fred Bonner, and he
takes over sales of the Lesnie Corporation in the United States,

(20:09):
and he says, I can sell them a car.

Speaker 2 (20:14):
I see a market here, yeah, And so it hits
the American market around the end of the fifties, Like
you said, around sixty two, Matchbox is knocking a million
units out per week. And again, Douglas Martin, in this
New York Times article we cited points out that's more

(20:35):
than like real cars by a factor of a lot.

Speaker 1 (20:40):
Yeah, and can you imagine the social dynamics there too.
I think Odell in that nineteen sixty two period, which
again quoted by the New York Times article, he said,
we produce more Rolls Royces in a single day than
the Rolls Royce company is made in its entire history. Okay,

(21:01):
it's apples, the l apples orange. It's a good it's good.

Speaker 2 (21:05):
It's a good quote though, it's it's great, it's very
it's very impressive.

Speaker 1 (21:10):
I hope he was talking with the person interviewing him,
and I hope when he said that he picked up
a little toy car and made room room and just
sort of sailed it andross the table.

Speaker 3 (21:25):
And then the interviewer is like, what's your point, sir?

Speaker 1 (21:29):
Exactly?

Speaker 3 (21:31):
So I want to jump in here. No.

Speaker 4 (21:32):
I remember when we were doing the uh kind of
like the parallel story about the Japanese car toy industry.
You you talked like they I guess they made like
a Lexus or something, and you're like, you know, there's
some guys like, hey, baby, you want to go see
my a Lexus?

Speaker 3 (21:44):
You know, somebody did with one of these Rolls Royces
also like I got a Rolls Royce at home.

Speaker 2 (21:48):
Yeah, exactly at the time of the y. You know what,
you never know, it could have still been impressive enough,
you know, to seal the deal. It's like, because there
weren't that many of these, These were kind of remarkable
to behold.

Speaker 3 (21:58):
This was a new phenomenon.

Speaker 2 (22:00):
So like for someone to have this, they would have
had the kind of the hottest thing on the market
at the time.

Speaker 1 (22:05):
I mean, think of die Cast rocket and Space Shuttle
models during the Space Race. It's the same thing. You know,
you're a kid, dream big. So in nineteen sixty four,
Lesnie contacts our boy Fred Brauner and he has this
stack of matchbox cars that he's been selling, and they say, okay,
we're going to buy those all back from you. Great

(22:28):
job Fred. Also, we think you're cool. Do you want
to work with us? Do you want to lead the
US division of Lesnie products? And Fred says absolutely yes,
And then they probably both take a little car and
go in front of each other. And just to clarify

(22:50):
we were talking about this off air when we say
they bought stacks of matchbox cars back from Fred Brauner,
he didn't have stock in the company. Remember these were
not available in the United States.

Speaker 3 (23:05):
He just got a.

Speaker 1 (23:06):
Hold of a ton of them.

Speaker 2 (23:07):
He got a lot of products and yea product a
commodity for them. Hey, so now we have a market here,
let's have those back that you fulfills our agreement, and
now we're gonna you know, move these units as it were.

Speaker 1 (23:20):
And so with that in mind, we're being as objective
as possible. We are going to introduce you to the
origins of hot wheels as well. There's a guy named
Elliott Handler. He's one of the co founders of this
huge company, Mattel.

Speaker 2 (23:40):
Again one of these legacy companies that just sort of
starts early, gets to the market first, and then becomes
so ubiquitous and associated with like everything big in the
toy world, including Barbie. They have spun off Fisher Price
at some point. They had connections with all of the
biggest like movie studios and tie ins you could possibly imagine,
and I think pretty much contind you with that level

(24:01):
of you know, ownership of the marketplace to this day.

Speaker 1 (24:05):
Yeah, Mattel was a new kid on the block as well.
They were founded in January of nineteen forty five out
on the West coast, and they were super into they
were super into multiple toy lines, so of course they
would get their spider sense about this Elliott Handler. He's

(24:29):
running Mattel, he's a co founder, and he says, we're
going to make to your point about gender toys. He says,
we're gonna make die cast toy cars for boys. And
he says, we've got a huge market for small car
models and it's dominated by these jokers across the Atlantic,

(24:52):
these Matchbox people, and everybody else in the boardroom. To
be clear, everybody else in the Mattel boardroom is saying, Elliott, buddy,
we love you, you know we love you, but you're
being a schmuck. This is never gonna work. And he said,
believe me when I co founded Mattel. YadA, YadA, YadA.

(25:17):
Whatever he said. It convinced them, and it turned out
that Elliott Handler was right. The cars that Mattel created
were a huge success. They came out strong in nineteen
sixty eight with sixteen different models. And maybe we talked
about Handler. Maybe we talked about Elliott a little bit

(25:39):
because he he had a bit of a personal grudge,
I think because his grandson loved Matchbox cars.

Speaker 2 (25:51):
But like we were kind of hinting at earlier, Matchbox
at this point already was starting to get this reputation,
you know, rightfully so for being that kind of bespoke
collector's kind of old world sensibility of craft. You know,
like precision tooled German toys, you know that kind of stuff,
Like they are very when you're mass marketing something, and

(26:14):
especially when the United States are concerned, things like that
tend to go out the window. It's more about like,
how can we, you know, get rid of the human element,
how can we make these things as reproducible on the
largest scale possible, Because let's remember, I mean, when you
know the Matchbox deal happened and we're talking about trading
stacks of cars, we're talking about a relatively finite supply.

Speaker 1 (26:36):
Yeah, Matchbox is. Matchbox is the og, the original gangster here,
and match Box is basing all of their stuff on
vehicles that already exist. Right These are two scale reproductions
of very important vehicles, singular cars, construction equipment, hot wheels.

(27:05):
Goes a little off the rails. They say, we're gonna
make these things that could be vehicles even if they
don't exist, we're gonna make one. They get brighter colors,
put stickers on everything. They do, fantasy designs that are
kind of based on wild imaginings of hot rod culture.

Speaker 2 (27:24):
Of course, and why wouldn't you, you know, but it
is really funny. It was just a difference in sort
of thinking around you know, those early matchbook cars, And
when we were talking about that, I was thinking, man
and a hot wheels car what I was used to,
and I was a kid that would be a sticker,
that wouldn't be like a machine tooled little engraving or
like an actual piece of thing that had to be made.

(27:45):
Hot wheels kind of essentially, like we said, sort of
dumbed down the idea, figured out how to make it
much more scalable, and also, you know, broke the box
of kind of creativity. It's like, how do we just
make this whatever we want.

Speaker 3 (27:59):
It to be?

Speaker 2 (28:00):
And that's pretty attractive for a mass market for kids
who aren't necessarily interested in like a perfect Rolls Royce replica.

Speaker 3 (28:08):
But Noel, they were cool. They're so cool.

Speaker 1 (28:11):
Okay, okay, okay, Nerd Okay, you guys are both cool.
You're both very cool. Uh, Benjamin, thank you Maxigaman. So
the thing is by saving costs, this is around the
time plastic is a big deal right in manufacturing. By
saving cost Hot Wheels also made a toy that was

(28:35):
more fun arguably, and it all goes back to the
tiny replicas of wheels. They used wider wheels manufactured of
plastic versus the narrow metal wheels of the old school matchbox.
This means that if you buy a Hot Wheels car,
it's a kid's idea of a hot rod car. And

(28:58):
those plastic wheels right allow it to roll pretty freely,
pretty quickly. Because plastic weighs less, there's less friction, it
picks up more speed. Also, they purposely design the wheel
with what's called a tamper, which allow like it makes
an angle such that a toy car, if you just

(29:21):
throw it roll it across a floor, it can glide
in clean straight lines. And Mattel just kept all respect
to you, guys, Mattel. Mattel just kept kind of failing
their way to the top of the toy car game.

Speaker 2 (29:45):
No, and that's the thing, Like it sounds like we're
nagging on the idea of like making something more accessible,
and like sure, if you're someone who really appreciates collectors' items,
and you know, the kinds of craftsmanship that goes into
stuff that's its own thing. But to make something that
like kind of capitalizes on the zeitgeist and like figured out,
like what do kids really want?

Speaker 3 (30:06):
There's something impressive about that, even if it is kind
of like evil.

Speaker 2 (30:10):
Corporate, you know, marketing kind of stuff. I gotta give
them props. They figured out how to make a car
that truly did go zoom zoom, and then they started
to kind of go from there, and then they could
introduce all of these accessories and all of these other
things and all of these tie ins because they could
make their car whatever they wanted it to be.

Speaker 1 (30:27):
And speaking and failing up, like I was saying earlier,
Mattel had a bunch of stuff in the workshop, you know,
things that never really got to the public, or maybe
even didn't get past drawing board phase. Earlier, pre late
nineteen sixties, Mattel had thought about creating a guitar, and

(30:49):
the whole purpose of their mission with their guitar project
was to make a guitar that never went out of tune.
They lost a ton of money on this.

Speaker 3 (31:00):
It's so funny.

Speaker 1 (31:01):
It never came out. It never came out.

Speaker 2 (31:04):
As a musician, like you know who always like how
would you? And also who cares? Just tune it, make
a tuner instead of you're designing the wrong thing, Mattel,
like it's never gonna happen, and like it's just again,
how would you? How you made you and the weird
thing to glom onto and like make your whole like crusade.

Speaker 3 (31:25):
I'm just thinking, it's like how bad would those strings sound?

Speaker 4 (31:28):
Like all your points is like completely correct, like that
just that's just not gonna happen.

Speaker 3 (31:33):
But let's play this.

Speaker 4 (31:34):
You know, one in a billion they actually pulled this off,
they'll probably be like the crappiest sounding strings. Very yes,
it sounds like a project made by somebody who's.

Speaker 2 (31:43):
Not who doesn't understand music or any like just doesn't
get it, you know, Like.

Speaker 1 (31:47):
Yes, it's it's big producer energy. It's big executive producer energy. Right,
Someone's like, well, I love the ventures, but I hate
having to keep tuning my guitar.

Speaker 3 (31:58):
And everything, big director energy.

Speaker 1 (32:01):
There we go. So here's the thing. Mattel absolutely craps
the bed on this. The guitar never comes out and
they get far enough into this ideation process that they've
made a ton of this magical mystery guitar string wire

(32:22):
and they don't have anything to do with it. So
they decide, Hey, we're going to use these wires as
the axles for our hot wheels, and that makes them
lighter than the matchbox toys, and it also allows the cars,
the toy cars to go much faster because there's less

(32:46):
weight involved. They've failed upwards yet again.

Speaker 3 (32:49):
Ben, I know the answer for you. Max. Did you
ever do the Pinewood Derby? Oh? Yeah, absolutely, it did
a four or five years I think. Yeah. Did you
elementary school?

Speaker 2 (32:59):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (33:00):
Yeah. I didn't stick around after elementary school though I didn't.
I knew boy Scouts. I didn't Cub scouts you were
too cool.

Speaker 2 (33:06):
Well, but I believe you made it all through the
ranks of we below boy Scout, Cup Scout, et cetera,
and whatever order that happens. I didn't make a past
Cub Scout, but I did have the privilege of competing
in the Pinewood Derby. And for those that don't know,
it's you know, a race down a you know, a
standardized kind of hill track with this like car kit
that you make, and I just remember and want to

(33:26):
get y'all's opinion. Was it cheating to put coins on
the bottom.

Speaker 1 (33:31):
It was cheating. It is cheating. Yeah, to weight the
front of the vehicle is cheating.

Speaker 2 (33:38):
So the way you get speed is by whittling it
in a certain way or like carving it down making
it as aerodynamic as possible.

Speaker 1 (33:45):
Yes, the ethical way to cheat with the distribution of
weight would it would all depend on the type of
wood that you use to create the vehicle. I'm sorry,
the ethical way to cheat, the ethical way to Jeez
derby fair enough? Okay, well, but again that's all kind
of as a result of this type of energy, you know,

(34:08):
like the idea of let's make a small thing that
we can make go really fast and then we can
like have you know, kids like racing each other. Yeah,
And so imagine you are a department store of the time, right,
You're a Sears, Roebuck or whatever. In this case, Kmart,

(34:28):
which used to be a fairly like popular department store.
I guess I don't know how many are around today,
but Kmart decide Oh, Max says there are three. Max
is nodding, okay, oh right, you're gonna stay on mute.
There are not many kmarts. They are an endangered corporate

(34:50):
species at the very least. But back in the day,
Kmart was one of the big US distributors that choose
between the p seeing coke of Matchbox versus Hot Wheels.
They chose Hot Wheels, and they did it because they
watched versions of both toys on a plastic track and

(35:14):
they said, Wow, the Hot Wheels car performs better than
the Matchbox car. That thing just kind of does and
then yeah, and then steers the wrong way, et cetera.
And after this meeting, actually before they leave the meeting,

(35:34):
they have a handshake deal that says Mattel will sell
fifty million Hot Wheels cars to Kmart.

Speaker 3 (35:43):
Also, I want to jump in here. I actually went
and looked it up.

Speaker 4 (35:45):
There twenty Kmart retail stores last the United States, four
of which are in the US Virgin Islands. Twenty percent
of the k Marts in America are in the US
virgini Isles.

Speaker 1 (35:55):
Let's do the sound, cue the phone backs and peacefull
in log it's just for you right now with.

Speaker 3 (36:07):
The fat which one is that?

Speaker 1 (36:11):
Back to the backs?

Speaker 2 (36:12):
Of course, I thought you met like corporate mouthfeasans we
need a sound cue for that as well, And I'm sorry,
I just want to backtrack to my Pinewood Derby aside.

Speaker 3 (36:22):
One second.

Speaker 2 (36:23):
Nineteen fifty three was when that first race took place,
so that would have been parallel to kind of what
was going on with.

Speaker 1 (36:28):
It's in the zeitgeist exactly. Can you imagine being a
kid in the nineteen fifties or nineteen sixties and you say,
I've been so good, all I want for my birthday
is a matchbox or a Hot Wheels car, and your
parents say, we got you a pocket knife, here's a stick.

(36:50):
Do your best. Yeah, take that with you to school
on a show until day.

Speaker 2 (36:56):
Yeah. Honestly, you'd probably be better off with the pocket
knife because you could learn to fend yourself.

Speaker 3 (37:00):
And they can do all sorts of the impending apocalypse.

Speaker 2 (37:03):
But you know, messbox cars and hot wheels were fun,
and we're into now like nineteen sixty eight. I think
they made sixteen different releases, right.

Speaker 1 (37:12):
Mm hmmm. Yeah. The first hot wheels car to hit
the market was the custom Camaro. And then if you
are a collector of hot wheels vehicles or toys, I
should say then you know those first sixteen releases as
the quote unquote Sweet sixteen. They are identified by the

(37:33):
red stripe on the tires. There were also you know,
various accoutrement in paraphernalia that came out tracks, different sets.
You could you know, you could like race them around
and so on. They became a massive success to your
earlier point, Noel, and this success, the gravity of it,

(37:55):
it wasn't all trumpets and angel farts for everybody. There
was one guy who worked at Mattel named Harry Bentley Bradley,
who came from the actual car industry, and he said, okay, Mattel,
good game, good game. I'm going back to work on

(38:17):
actual cars. And when the company asked him to rejoin
Mattel and they said, hey, we've got something really special
going on with these hot wheels, he said, not me,
but I know a guy. Here's my friend, Ira Guilford.
He can help you design hot wheels cars.

Speaker 2 (38:38):
Because he had just left Chrysler, an actual facts auto manufacturer,
and he shout out Laura and vogelahm Baker him at
the top of the Chrysler building. What do you mean
actual facts, Oh, actual facts? Sorry, I thought it was
anti reference. I don't know why I think of a
musical theater when in the conversation no reason whatsoever. We

(39:01):
love you, Lauren, But yeah, I mean this. The guy
understands design in the first place, so I would think
maybe though coming from Chrysler, he might be more of
that kind of matchbox mind of like you know, making
like you know, replicas of actual cars, or he might
have that more philosophy in mind. But you know, if
you pay someone the right amount of money, they can

(39:22):
like pivot as well.

Speaker 1 (39:23):
M sure. Yeah, and the the aesthetics apply equally, as
I would argue, right. So, so our buddy Ira takes
the job of designing the next generation of Hot Wheels models.
Some of the coolest cars that Hot Wheels comes out with,

(39:44):
at least according to collectors, are from Ira Guilford's mind.
He makes the twin Mill, he makes the Splitten image.

Speaker 3 (39:55):
He's great names.

Speaker 1 (39:56):
They are great names, right, and they're gathering Mattella's gathering
a cadre of designers, right. And the more familiar you
are with the world of actual automotive design, the more
important your input becomes. And it's kind of an alluring
thing too. If you are coming from the world of
automobile design. Now you just make whatever you think looks cool.

(40:22):
You don't have to worry about engine performance the way
you don't have to worry about intake or how the
transmission works.

Speaker 2 (40:30):
Well, it's a concept cars. You know, like people that
like design stuff for auto manufacturers that maybe, well it's
their job just to design kind of the aesthetic and
they don't have to worry about any of that stuff.
And then a lot of times those don't go anywhere
because they just don't make logistical sense to manufacture. But
if you're one of those people, and that's where your
passion is, worry for a company like this is a

(40:52):
dream come true because that's all you do. You just
churn these.

Speaker 1 (40:54):
Out and you just dream. You know, that's that's kind
of good. And so there's much more to the story.
Of course, Hot Wheels and Mattel continue gathering more people,
legends like Larry Wood join the Hot Wheels team. It
goes on and on. But now you are perhaps thinking

(41:16):
ridiculous historians. You're saying, Noel Max Ben, You've set up
these two juggernauts of a very weird specific industry. What
happens when worlds collide. That's what we will answer in
part two of this week special series. Big big thanks,
of course to our research associate, doctor z the legend

(41:40):
doctor Z who you know, Noel. I think I think
Zach probably has some hot wheels.

Speaker 3 (41:46):
He probably does.

Speaker 1 (41:47):
I think I might have a few. Well.

Speaker 2 (41:49):
You know, my very dear friend Harry, you know very well,
is a collector, a big record collector. But also some
of the matchbox and wheels cars that he has in
this collection are quite valuable. You mentioned the red stripes
on those tires for the what was it, the Sweet sixteen. Yeah,
those are worth you know, I mean two hundred, two

(42:10):
hundred and fifty bucks a pop.

Speaker 1 (42:11):
And if you have some of those toys kicking around,
save them, you know what I mean, Save them for
someone that you think will really enjoy them. Right, Just
don't just throw them out when you're moving, is what
we're saying. We're also saying that we're going to start

(42:32):
to amp things up in part two when we learn
a little bit about the conflict between matchbox and hot wheels.
It's a bit of a pepsiv coke kind of Highland
moment or four versus Ferrari just so and big big thanks,
of course to Max Williams, big thanks to Alex Williams

(42:54):
who composed this slamming track, Big big thanks to Jonathan Strickland,
who I from what I understand, he's the type of
dude who just took the wheels off the toy cars.

Speaker 3 (43:07):
He just wants to watch the world burn. We'll see
you next time, folks.

Speaker 2 (43:17):
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