Selects: How Hot Wheels Work

If you're an American who had a childhood, you probably have some nostalgia for Hot Wheels. Get your engines revved for this trip down memory lane as we discuss these fun and iconic toys in this classic episode.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, everyone, it's your homeboy Josh. And I was feeling
nostalgic this week, So for this edition of s Y
s K Selects, I've chosen our classic episode, How Hot
Wheels Works. It's from two thousand fifteen and it is banging.
I hope you enjoy it. I hope it takes you
back to some great memories and um who knows. At

(00:22):
the very least, I hope it melos you out. Welcome
to stuff you should know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles

(00:43):
w Chuck Bryant, Jerry. You know. That just sounded like,
what like, that's what happens. Like you're having a nightmare
and you me wakes you up in the middle of
the night, and he just goes, hey, welcome to the podcast,
and then she slaps you across the face. Real part m.
It's true. That is with its own bod. It sounded
that's pretty accurate. I don't know what got into me.

(01:06):
You were just super charged about this topic. That's terrible.
Super charged. I'll get it. It's like a super charged engine.
I didn't even think about that. Oh good, that makes
me feel a little better. Yeah. Um, 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. Nice hot wheels are

(01:27):
pretty great. Yeah. I had a quite a collection, and
I don't know where they are today. They're missing, huh. Yeah,
I don't know if they were thrown out or if
if my brother has them, or they're my mom's attic
or what, because I'm kind of curious about have any
valuable you need to find them? Yeah, they could be apparently,
as far as hot wheels collectors go, it could be

(01:48):
in mint condition all the way down to beater condition.
I was high they rank them. Yeah, mine would be
beaters because I played with them like crazy. That's good.
I mean, that's what they're for, you know. And there's
value for a beater too, like some people apparently harvest
them for parts to rebuild like a you know, a
new Frankenstein model. Yeah, that's pretty neat. There's a lot

(02:12):
of stuff you can do with them. Yeah, and we
should thank the fifth grader who wrote this article too.
Sad face. I complained about that out loud to Holly.
I was like, this article actually says sad face, like
as a sentence, Yeah, I know that issues. I'm glad
you said something. Yeah what if it was a fifth grader?

(02:33):
Your feelings are all hurt. I think your feelings are
hurt either way. Now, sad face. So we're talking about
hot wheels today. I had a couple. Um, my favorite
toy was g I Joe, but I appreciated Hot Wheels
Joe too. Do g I Joe episode? Sometimes I had
the older ones, though you probably had huge ones. Yeah yeah,

(02:55):
now I had the real ones. Ye oh yeah, I
don't that's fight words. Man. The ones that I had
were so awesome. They were like there was a huge,
fast collection of all of them. There was like cobra.
Cobra didn't exist when you were collecting g I Joes. No,
but how could you say, like, oh, that one that's
ten inches tall and has real clothes and fuzzy hair

(03:18):
and the kung fu grip is inferior to this little
plastic thing. I think you just said it. All fuzzy
hair says it right there. I don't really mean that, Chuck.
I I don't have a dog in that fight. Like,
if you like the big g I Joes that's cool.
I got a problem. Yeah, it's a quick side note.
I have to tell this story when you know how

(03:40):
I used to do book reports and you would have
to have a visual aid. Yeah. Um, I might have
told this before. If I do, I apologize, I don't
recognize it. Um. I did a report on Franco Harris
went in a lunchary school because he was the football player. Yeah.
I don't know why I did Frankul Harris, But um,
I got my mom to make me a little Pittsburgh

(04:00):
Steelers uniform for my g I Joe because he looked
like Franco Harris. Nice. Yeah, that was my visual lady,
you still have it, No, of course not. We have
the G I Joe's. But I think the Steelers uniform
is gone. Bye bye. That's said. Yeah, you know, I'm
sure your mom put a lot of work into that.
Now it feels guilty. Uh So, Chuck, I have a
question for you. Did you know that the number one

(04:24):
vehicle manufacturer on the planet is, in fact hot wheels?
I did it. Kind of It's astounding until you stop
and think about it. Sure like, apparently, since when hot
wheels were first introduced, more than four billion hot wheels
have been produced. That's more than the big four Detroit
automakers combined. You're like wow, and then you think, oh yeah,

(04:49):
it costs a minute fraction of the cost to build
a hot wheels and it does a normal car. Plus. Also,
it's not like you're gonna go, I want this uh
bewick cutless supreme in every color it comes in, right,
you know what the hot wheels you can do that? Yeah?

(05:09):
What's the Lego stat is? They're the biggest manufacturer of tires?
Yeah there? Yeah. I wonder though, do these not count
as tires because they're plastic? The count as wheels? I
don't know, man, because four billion times four that's sixteen
billion tires. That's a really great question. I might have
to challenge Lego or maybe just look up how many

(05:29):
tires they manufacture. Old Kirk Christiansen is not going to
be happy about this. Who was that the founder of Lego? Remember?
Oh oh yeah, that's right. I thought you were saying old. Yeah. So, um,
let's talk about the history of this stuff. Huh. So
hot wheels, like I said, have been around since nine

(05:50):
and anybody who's heard the Barbie Trademark podcast will recognize
the name Elliott Handler. That's Ruth Handler, the inventor of
Barbie trade marks. Husband Um and Elliott apparently saw a
real chance to muscle in on an already extant market

(06:12):
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. 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. Yeah. And
the rumor is that he saw his grandchildren playing with

(06:32):
them and said, uh, they kind of stink. I could
make these better, cooler, And he had a um, as
the story goes, had a designer which we'll talk about
in the second called Harry Bradley, and he had a
hot rod and Elliott was in the parking lot when
Dan said, man, those are some hot wheels you got there.
And and apparently if you go look look at the

(06:55):
old original commercials for hot wheels, did they say that
that's how well, that's how they pronounce it wheels hot wheels. Yeah,
the emphasis is on the hot. It sounds awkward. They're like,
race your hot wheels. You can make you can race them.
Just go buy some hot wheels. That's what they That's
how they say it, collect all your hot wheels. Yeah,

(07:19):
but that makes more sense in the context of a sentence.
It does having been raised right, you know, post the
fast wheels, hot wheels, because wheels. Now I'm trying to
picture the guy in the parking lot saying, those are
some hot wheels you got on your there? You'd say
hot wheels you got there? You know? Yeah, Oh boy,

(07:41):
we can sure waste some time, we sure can. But
the first is, like you said, when the first line
came out of sixteen Hot Wheels, they were sold initially
for fifty nine cent apiece. Yeah, And like you said,
the guy whose car originally inspired the name Hot Wheels

(08:02):
UM was Harry Bradley, and he was the designer of
that first sixteen cars. They were also called UM. California
Customs Miniatures. Was that first original sixteen group of Hot
Wheels UM that were released in nine so and Harry
Bradley designed them all, including apparently he got his hands

(08:23):
on the first one, by the way that came out
was a Chevy Camarose. The second one that came out
was the Chevy Corvette, and apparently the Chevy Corvette came
out before the actual Corvette came out. Yeah, the sixty
nine Corvette. That is so Harry Bradley was an old
hand and not just miniature car design, but car design
in general. He was an old GM designer and I

(08:45):
guess he had connections still at GM and probably 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 and re
leasing the corvette. Yeah, sixty nine, Um, thank you, that's

(09:05):
all right. The yeah, as the lord goes, he supposedly
knew that the cafeteria door was unlocked, so he snuck
in through the cafeteria door. But that's called industrial espionage. Yeah,
that sounds like a story like just lore. Okay, but
maybe so maybe he'd committed industrial espionage. Um. So, like

(09:26):
you said, the those were the two of the first
sixteen in that original lineup, that original collection, which if
you have any of those, yeah, yeah, you got some
money that you're sitting on, because I mean like they
went all out on those that original line Like there
are bushings to the suspension, Yeah, and the I mean

(09:48):
the chassis. UM. It had suspension like shocks, like you
could press them down and it would bounce back. I
had some of those. I don't think they were from
sixty eight. But when did they quit making as set
up until seventies seven was when they stopped making the UM.
Oh no, seventy is when the suspension got an overhaul. Okay,
so for the first couple of years, like, they were

(10:11):
really putting a lot into these things. UM. The tires
were red line racing slicks, UM 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 by making these
things far more functional, um than the match boxes were.

(10:33):
The matchbox cars were, so they really could race. And
if you put a matchbox car up against the comparable
hot wheels, say the same model car, um, the hot
wheels will destroy it every time in the head to
head race. As we saw on the internet. A guy
did that of course. Uh. He took a two volkswagons
and two OUTI eights I think in one matchbox and

(10:56):
one hot wheel and he said they won by at
least a car link every time he tried. And this
was no loop de loop rain things was just the
straight race. Um. They painted them originally in Spectra Flame,
which was very shiny and sparkly and expensive. Um. And
I don't think we said that all hot wheels are
built at one sixty scale. Yeah, that's a big point,

(11:18):
but not necessarily all match butt cars. They kind of
vary here and there, right. Um. But like you said
that Spectra Flame and the red line tires didn't only
last until seventy seven, and the suspension only lasted till
nineteen seventy and they sadly a lot of that had
to do with the fact that they moved them from Hawthorne,

(11:38):
California to Hong Kong. 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 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 um, with with any collector's item.

(12:00):
As they started to downgrade the components, in the parts
and the manufacturing and ultimately the final product, all that
did was make the original stuff all the more valuable
today because as much fewer and fewer of them as
the years go on, proportionately speaking. Yeah, they had actual axles,
like you know, it was like a real They were
designed by car designers. Uh. And they were made apparently

(12:24):
to reach two hundred scale miles per hour. Yeah, that's
pretty cool. That's way cool. You remember, like in the
cockroach episode we talked about how they're the fastest animal
on the planet relatively speaking. Pretty neat stuff. Um, so
chuck right out of the gate. Mattel had a hit
on his hands. Um. They released him in nineteen sixty eight.

(12:45):
By nineteen seventy, Hot Wheels was a Saturday morning cartoon
in the vein of like Dune Buggy and Scooby Doo
and all those guys. Hannah, Barbara dug you're speed Buggy,
Speed Buggy. Yeah, remember speed Buggy. It was like a
dune buggy that could talk, and it was basically wonder

(13:05):
bug No, it's speed Buggy, um, because there was like
if you took Shaggy and put some like racing goggles
on him and then turned Scooby Doo into a speed
a doom buggy, that's speed Buggy. Was that a cartoon? Yeah,
wing around solving mysteries and stuff like that. Yeah, Wonderbug
was I think that was live action. This was a cartoon,

(13:26):
said Marty Croft. This is exactly like Scooby Doo by
the people who did Scooby Doo, using the same people
who did the voices for Scooby Doos. 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 good guys and do you know this prus
what is the nineteen seventies that the doom Buggie was

(13:47):
a very popular thing, remember seeing those on the road,
Like I used to see him all the time. Not
all the time, but in the seventies it was a
common thing. Yeah, you don't see him anymore, very rarely. No.
No Gremlins, no u goos, No, no wonder bugs. You
know I like gremlins, do you uh? They're okay for
me though. The koded Gras of car design is the

(14:09):
AMC Pacer. Yeah, it's like the four Mica Kitchen of cars.
It's beautiful in all the weirdest ways. That would be
my soft after Hot Wheels if I had a hot
Wheels that if I just could have one hot wheel,
it would I don't know if that would be it,
but I'd be happy with that one. Now do they

(14:30):
have that that's a hot wheel? Oh yeah. And if
you look up a mc gremlin hot wheels, they went
to town on those. They had some with like the
the intakes, like sticking out of the hood and um,
just all sorts of just awesome different variations like indiecr
Gremlins and stuff like that. Because and that raises a

(14:50):
pretty good point. Hot wheels has always been about the
racing design, Like they've designed them to look like racing cars,
but they've also manufactured to actually be able to win
a race, like we talked about with matchbox. 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

(15:12):
could get you could get a matchbox like a delivery truck, right,
you know, they had that, and but the match boxes
looked more real. They all were about looking realistic and
not necessarily performance. 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. You know. Uh,

(15:33):
we'll talk more about all of this jam right after this.

(15:55):
You want to go ahead and talk about some of
the other differences between Matchbox and hot Wheel. Yes, since
we're at it, um, Matchbox or I'm sorry, hot Wheel
is the one that is more likely to have branded versions.
Oh man. And do they ever like the Ghostbusters ectomobile
right um? Or even more than that, Like they have
a deal with eminem Mars for two thousand fifteen, so

(16:19):
they have like a TwixT trucks and a Skittles van
and like all this stuff. They have licensing with d
C and Marvel this year, Fast and the Furious. I
know they had a line. So they're they're really big
time into branded and a lot of times they'll have
like a store will just have exclusives, access to an
exclusive line of Skittles cars or something like that that

(16:43):
you can only get at KB Toys. Yeah. I think
they have a NASCAR deal too, If I'm not mistaken,
I would not be surprised. Uh. And the hot wheels
usually have a little bit um wider, longer axle and
wider wheels. Um, because it's just cooler if that wheel
sticks up from the body a little bit, you know. Well,
plus also supposedly, and we'll talk about this a little more.
When you shrink a car down to scale, it looks

(17:05):
a little weird. Yeah, you might as well go ahead
and bring that up. Okay, it looks weird. You can't
just shrink it and have it's in the same proportion
and have it look normal, right Like, it will be
as far as like shrinking a car down by scale,
it will be in the exact same proportion. But it's
just awful a little bit. Like So what they do

(17:27):
to make hot wheels race able is they expand the
wheel well a little more. Yea, they break it out
a little bit, which is why the wheel stick out
some on a on a hot wheels, but not on
a matchbox. That's right, because match boxes are all about realism.
To heck with how it looks, as long as it's real. Uh.
The um one of the my favorite ones, and I

(17:47):
had one of these that they mentioned this article was
the red baron. The person who wrote this that it
was an inexplicable and inexplicably cool helmet over the cockpit. UM.
I don't know, but a explic couple. It was just
the roof of the car was a helmet. Um. But
I looked it up again today and I was like, oh, yeah,
I had that thing, but it was it wasn't a

(18:10):
Nazi helmet per se, but it was that shape of
the helmet. Uh, Like the U. S. Soldiers had that
shape now, you know where it's cut lower around the
ears instead of just a straight you know, like the
World War two helmet. But the Nazis used those first,
you know, because it's a better design for war. And
it also had a black iron cross on the side

(18:31):
of it, well hence the red baron, right, Yeah, but
it was It's easy now as an adulta look and
say that looks like a little Nazi hot rod. 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 look like the biker gang
would wear like those helmet with the iron cross. Yeah.
And all of it was Southern California hot rod culture. Yeah,

(18:54):
what gave rise to hot wheels. So it makes sense. Yeah,
I don't I don't think there was any like sartitious intent. Yeah. Um, 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 sixteen being released. Um, the
second release they had I think twenty two new cars

(19:16):
thirty three total, and then um, the third year they
they had another. They released thirty three after that, right
oh no, yeah, I'm sorry, thirty three by nine seventy.
So they did sixteen, twenty four and then thirty three
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.
So kids were going crazy for it. And another way

(19:39):
that Mattel very wisely targeted children was to get in
with fast food. Uh. In nineteen seventy the first hot
Whales came out as a toy at Jack in the Boxes. Yeah.
The big one though, the one that like put them
over the top, was in nineteen eighty three when kids
who were lucky enough to be taken to McDonald's for

(20:02):
dinner the happy Meal and to get a wheels what
they called them at the time, uh or could get
one of fourteen hot wheels in three 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 Toyota Mini Trek, which is a like

(20:24):
a station wagon camper, and it even said painted on
the side good time camper that you could get and
you're happy meal, which if I could have one hot wheel,
it would probably be that. You know what they were
doing now that I look back through my adult eyes,
like snorting pot. No, they were giving you a bunch

(20:45):
of crappy ones because you wanted to keep coming back
to get the cool one. Yeah. Probably you're like, I
got a citation, Like, can I go back because I
want to get the hot rod. That's exactly what they
were doing. Sure, man, I feel so like manipulated. What
did you think they were doing with happy meals? Well,
I mean, I know it's all manipulation to get you

(21:05):
to try and own all of them, but they should
have been all cool ones. But you can't do that
because the regular kid might be like, no, I got
I got the cool one. I'm fine. But if you
get this the citation, you feel jipped off and you
really want to go back and get one of the
hot rods. It's my eyes are wide open. My friends.
Well that's why our friends down Under in Australia have

(21:27):
like outlawed marketing directly to children, which I think is
a fantastic Really. Yeah, that's so unfair to market directly
to children. It's just almost literally is like taking candy
from a baby. Like kids aren't sophisticated enough to psychologically
defend themselves from being like bombarded with by adults to say,

(21:50):
go tell your parents to buy you this. You can't
function correctly without this trapper keeper, so go get it
the trappic keeper. Yeah, what did make a law? Yeah?
Really yeah, it's a big, very progressive law which I
think all countries should have adopt. Um. Well, in nineteen
eighty three, I agree wholeheartedly. By the way, in is

(22:12):
when that happy Meal thing happened. And also the same
year they moved from Hong Kong to Malaysia, um and
it and it said that's when they added their economy cars,
So that must have coincided with the citation. Yeah, the
citation man one of the most disappointing Happy Meal toys
you could possibly get. Yeah, because it reminded you of

(22:33):
your dad who drove a citation right, who was always mad. Oh,
dear so u Chuckers. Yes, after not a lot happened,
Hot Wills just kept going on, expanding more and more
and more. Um. I think they had another Happy Meals

(22:54):
joint in ninety one or something like that. Um and
uh five, they said we need to we need to
do something big and they did. They were at leased
something called Treasure Hunt series, which was a purposefully limited
release car series of cars. Um. I think they did

(23:15):
uh twelve models at ten thousand each originally and and
hence the name Treasure Hunt. They were hard to find. Yeah,
and one of the cooler ones for me, uh was
the Oldsmobile for forty two. Yeah. The thing is, dude
at my church had a four forty two and it
was just awesome. Man. He was he had like the

(23:35):
only muscle car in the youth group. And years, 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 the so and so and he
went and you know what, dude, I went, No, he went,
he still got it. Oh yeah, why would you get
rid of it? He still he still has the car.
Went to his Facebook page and it is like the

(23:56):
center of his life. I'm sure it's his baby. I mean,
he's had that thing since six and just it's juiced
up and he's to scare the daylights out of me
and that thing. But it was also exhilarating, you know,
to be riding with him and he you know, like
two feet of drag. He would lay like power breaking
and you would get like four sets of tires a year.

(24:17):
He'd be in the passenger seat, going safe, be jeezy. Yeah,
I was very scared because I was you know, I
didn't flirt with the wild side back then. The Oldsmobile
forty two is as close as you got. Was eating.
And then so that Treasure Hunt thing kind of went um.

(24:38):
It didn't go exactly as planning. Mattel was like, oh,
we could make even more money if we put these
into wider release. So the original ten thousand releases were
redoing again and again and again. So Treasure Hunt kind
of became commonplace. But it was a good idea and
it tapped into this whole idea of collecting. Like Mattel

(24:59):
was like, we know you're out there, and we're going
to design these just for you. Yeah, and we'll talk
more about collectors, um, but just to kind of button
up the history of hot wheels, it all came full
circle when um, Mattel bought Tycho and hence hot Wheels
bought Matchbox. So they're all owned by Mintel at this point. Yes,

(25:20):
all right, we'll get to the design and collecting right
after this. So back then, if you wanted to do

(25:45):
a smaller version of a larger car and scale it down, um,
you didn't have computer aided design and stuff. 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 um, you know, be good at math, right basically,

(26:07):
And like like we said, Harry Bradley, who's the daddy
of the hot wheels designs, Who's the guy who did
the first sixteen Um, he was a GM designer originally
in his footsteps followed Howard Reese and then after that
Larry would and they those are some of like the
legendary hot wheels designers. That's the Mountain Rushmore of hot
wheels pretty much. Yeah, um, and yeah, they would just

(26:30):
literally go out and measure these things, and that was
one way that Hot Wheels were born. 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. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. They They are
called the fantasy cars, like they're just the designers imagination

(26:53):
come to life. Whereas Matchbox only I believe, has uh
bred trucks exactly, well, they only have cars that are
based on real cars, right right. Hot Wheels has a
whole fantasy line. It's interesting that their own bites of
the same company still and that they just have kept
that distinction. You know. I guess some people are Matchbox

(27:14):
kids and some kids are Hot Wheels kids. I had both.
I think I had a bread truck. Is that why
you keep going to the bread truck? Well, no, I
didn't have a bread truck, but I do remember having
a couple of like weird utility type vehicles. Uh that
I don't remember. They were probably gifts or stocking stuffers
or something. I don't think I like sought it out.

(27:34):
I was always into Tonka trucks. I thought Tonko was great.
They were obviously much bigger, but those were like construction
vehicles like dump trucks and stuff like that, and still today.
Um that Volvo dump truck, the giant one, yeah, um
with the huge wheels, I think is one of the
coolest vehicles ever created. Yeah. I think I had one
of those when I was a kid. I didn't have

(27:54):
a lot of Tonka stuff. Um. One of my favorite
hot wheels though, was the little red Express truck. I
don't remember that if you saw it, you might it
might ring a bell. It was basically, uh, I can't
remember what kind of truck it was. I think it
was a Dodge, but it was just a cool red
step side pickup truck and it had the two uh,
the two vertical mufflers on each side that went up

(28:17):
above the truck. I think I know what you're talking about. Yeah. Yeah,
it's really cool. And if you go to them the
Peterson Automotive Museum in l A. They have a really
cool exhibit there that I haven't been to in person,
but I was looking at it, a line permanent exhibit
where they have the real life versions of the hot
wheel cars and they have a little red Express truck,

(28:39):
a full size one. Yeah, and I saw it and
I was like, whoa you just die from nostalgia. Look
might have cheered up a little bit at this at
the desk. Um, but they have, you know, the gussied
up corvettes with the big chrome engines coming out of
the hood. And do they have the four or four two? Uh?
I don't know if they have the four forty two.
But I'm there when friend dies, but it's in his will,

(29:03):
I'll go straight to the museum. I'm gonna go to
this thing though at some point I don't know, in
this next l a trip or not. But um, it's
right there near the LaBrea tarpets. I think, oh, yeah,
so I want to go check it out. I've been there. Yeah,
it's neat. It is neat. But back to the design.
These days, you're not gonna need a tape measure and
stuff like that. You're gonna photoshop designs and you're gonna

(29:26):
even get a three D printer to maybe to your prototype.
That had to have helped them tremendously, because you know,
with if you're designing real life cars and you have
a three D printer, that's pretty handy, but with hot
wheels like you can print out pretty much exactly what
it's gonna look like. And once they have them the
prototype done, they'll make them. They'll make a mold out

(29:47):
of it and then inject it with molten metal under
tremendous pressure. And that's why it's called die cast. You
create a die that you cast all of the ensuing
ones from. Yeah, and I think there may with less
metal than they used to be. Um, but they still
have metal components, right. Yeah, I haven't seen a new
one in a while. I haven't either, but I'm almost

(30:09):
positive they do. And apparently they're still about like a
dollar really Yeah. I was on the Hot Wheels collector
site today and like they kept making reference to about
a dollar. So so just what's called the main line? Yeah,
the ones that they make on mass the citation exactly. Um,
I'll bet if you've got your hands on that citation
be worth a few bucks. But they kept referring to

(30:31):
the mainline stuff. So as about a dollar, well, they've
just kept making their manufacturing cheaper and cheaper, so they've
maintained that cost, I guess. Uh. So as far as
collecting goes, uh, the most valuable and that is not um,
this crazy one they made out of diamonds for the
anniversary which we'll talk about in a minute. But the

(30:51):
most valuable regular hot wheel is the UH sixty eight
beach Bomb, which was a VW bud us in hot
pink that had UM real surfboard sticking out of the
back of it. Yeah. Originally, UM they only released I
think twenty five of them like that. There were a
couple of problems. It was difficult to manufacture them with

(31:13):
the surfboards sticking on the back, even though it was
more realistic, and it also um was terrible on like
a loop de loop track because I guess the surfboards
would either way I'm down or it would get stuck.
So they only made just a few of these things.
The beach Bomb that was the highest selling UM the
hot wheels ever, was a pink one. They made even

(31:35):
fewer of those because apparently a lot of boys were like,
I'm not playing with some pink van, even if it
does have cool surfboards sticking out the back. So the
things sold for like I think seventies something seventy five
thousand dollars in two thousand and it is since sold again.
In two thousand and eleven, I saw in like l
a magazine for like a hundred and twenty five thousand.

(31:58):
It's a lot of money for a tiny little car.
Yeah it is. And that's the highest one ever apparently,
um by a long shot too. Yeah. Um. I mean
I've seen others that were worth like ten grand and stuff,
like I think one of those forty two originals is
like ten grands. Yeah, I guess like nineteen seventy. Mongoose
or cobra are worth about ten grand these days. Um.

(32:21):
And a lot of them, just like with any collector's item, Um,
you'll see if there was just a few of them made,
obviously they're going to be worth a lot more. Um.
If there's something that where they adjusted the design, like
for example, the Python was originally called the Cheetah, and
then they found out that a real life executive with
real life lawyers at GM owned the name cheetah because

(32:45):
apparently GM executives just owned names for cars that could
potentially be used like every ana fast animal name, right exactly.
So they changed it to the the Python. But there
they that was after they'd started manufacturing the Cheetah. So
there's some out there that say eda uh stamped on
the bottom, And if you have one of those, it's
support ten grand. Yeah, it's funny to think about. It's

(33:06):
the same with Star Wars, Like sometimes the mistake ones
are the ones that are super valuable because like there
was some recall, but like, oh, but you want that
one because the Boba Fett's rocket really shot out before
kids started choking on them, right or catching on fire,
and that's the one you want. But like you said,
it's all about scarcity and supply to man, dude, this

(33:27):
whole thing has reminded me of um, a really great
gallery I put together about hilarious knockoff toys that, yeah,
go to stuff you should know dot com and look
that up. It's pretty awesome. 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

(33:51):
trademark law maybe or something or else. They just fully
don't understand the toy and what it's a lurous, so
they just make it in this weird ter rotation. It's
pretty hilarious stuff. Yeah, it's a good one. We'll post
that again. Um. And then I did mention the diamonds
studded one. I always think these things are just ridiculous.
But um, but like to take any like the diamond

(34:14):
studded bras was worth, you know, yeah, for million bucks.
I just always think it's kind of dune. But they
did make a fort anniversary in edition in nineteen I'm sorry,
in two thousand and eight with hundred little diamonds and
rubies for tail lights and uh black diamonds for the
tires and all that stuff. Eighteen care at white gold body.

(34:35):
But um, it's worth a hundred and forty or cost
a hundred and forty thousand dollars to put together. But
I'm sure gaudy. It's a gaudy hot wheels. Yeah, it's
like cars. Cool looks like Mad Max's car? Oh you get?
Is that a picture of it? I don't think I
saw that. Can you identify that car? Uh? What is that?
Looks familiar? It does look familiar to me, sort of

(34:57):
like a DeLorean, but I don't think it is. I
don't think so either. No, man, that new Mad Max
looks good though. Are they remaking Mad Max? Well, there's
a new reboot I guess is what they call it
these days? Cool? Um? What's his face? That played? Uh?
Bain um Tom? But it looks it's the same director,

(35:25):
Tom Hardy. Yeah, Tom Hardy, but it's the same director
from all of the Mad Max series. So it's oh
really yeah yeah yeah, And it just looks just the
whole it's supposed to be just like one long, intense
chase battle. It sounds a lot like a Mad Max movie.
You want. Have you ever seen Vanishing Point? Uh? I think? So?

(35:46):
What is that? It was like, uh man, I can't
remember the car, but the car was basically the Star.
It was one long car chase from like I think, um,
Colorado to California. Yeah, I remember that. That's a good
one from the IND's Yeah, two lane Blacktops. That's another classic. Yeah,
I haven't seen that one. Yeah, that's good. When that

(36:07):
one weirdly had James Taylor in it when he was
young and like on drugs and cool? Were they apologizing
to France? No, I don't know what the deal was.
Did you hear about that? So that whole Charlie hebdough
um like solidarity March, the U S sent like I
think the assistant be in charge of the U s

(36:29):
d A or something like that. Um, so to apologize
John Carey head um, James Taylor go to France to perform.
You've got a friend shut up for the French government. Yeah,
we just talk about I know, isn't it send guns
and roses or something at least like well, not send

(36:50):
guns and roses from nineteen I would be guns and roses. Man.
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 time machine and go back
to to my hometown of Toledo, Ohio, which is where

(37:13):
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 your was it? Oh? Yeah,
I can't believe we sent James Taylor. I'm still dislike, Yeah,
I can't focus on anything. Well, if you want to
know more about James Taylor, hot wheels, or just about

(37:34):
anything there is in the universe, you can type it
into the search bar at how stuff works dot com.
And since I said search parts, time for listener mail.
I'm gonna call this um minimum wage argument, not argument proposal. Alright,
listen to how homelessness works from quite a few years ago,
and you guys commented that part of the problem was

(37:54):
at low minimum wage. In comparison the cost of renting
a two bedroom apartment, you'd have to something like eighty
seven per hours eighty seven hours per week to afford it,
with the implication we need to raise minimum wage. After
hearing this, a clear solution occurred to me. I think
disagreements on raising minimum wage a result was simple misunderstanding.

(38:14):
On the raised 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. On the don't raise
it side, people believe minimum wage is just a starting
point for working, uh, like for teenagers at their summer
job or after school. This I believes workers should uh,

(38:35):
we're never intended two and should not expect to be
able to support a family that pays minimum wage. So
here's my solution. 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. If we
decide as a nation that someone should be able to
raise a family in a two betterom apartment while earning

(38:56):
a wage minimum wage. Let's just figure out what that
would cost and set wage there. Figure in rent, clothing, food, utilities, transportation, etcetera.
Let's say it's twenty seven grand per year, then set
it at that rate. 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

(39:17):
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, and workers historically have been able to increase
compensation by gaining skills and good work history. With a
settled any argument about setting minimum wage at a living
wage would be mistaken because we all just decided that

(39:40):
people are not meant to live on minimum wage and
certainly not meant to support a family. That is from
Joe pro Haska in Reno, Nevada, and uh interesting, I
look forward to seeing the rebuttal emails. I love that
kind of stuff. Yeah, it's a great proposal. I mean so,
I think that is what it's based on. Sure, but

(40:00):
as far as I know, the cost of living calculations
are really out of date and take a lot of
stuff into account that doesn't really apply any longer. 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. But it would be nice
to put that issue to bed, to say like, this

(40:22):
is what we're trying to achieve, or this is not
what we're trying to achieve, at the very least, to
get everybody talking. Yeah, because should some teenager at his
first job make like fourteen bucks an hour? I don't know.
I don't know if that's sending the right message either.
I don't know. I don't know. We'll leave it up
to you guys, our dear listeners. When I started working,
it was like three bucks an hour or something. It

(40:44):
was ridiculously low. That is ridiculously low. Uh. If you
want to let us know how you feel about Joe's proposal,
was it Joe? I believe it was Joe Reno Joe.
You can tweet to us at s y ESK podcast.
You can post it on Facebook, dot com, slash stuff
you should know. You can put it in an email

(41:05):
at Stuff podcast at how Stuff Works dot com, and
just for kicks, you can hang around our home on
the web Stuff you Should Know dot Com. Stuff you
Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.