December 12, 2025 • 41 mins
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.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
A everybody chuck Here for another one of our Christmas
centric episodes with our twelve Days of Christmas Toys playlist,
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. Pretty
interesting story. Hope you guys enjoy it.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Welcome to Stuff you should know from HowStuffWorks dot com.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's
Charles w Chuck Bryant, and Jerry.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
You know that just sounded like, what like, that's what
happens like, You're having a nightmare and you MEI 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.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Repart. That's true. Yeah, that is what that sounded like.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
That's what it sounded.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
It's pretty accurate. I don't know what got into me.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
You were just supercharged about this topic.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
Oh that's terrible. What supercharged?
Speaker 1 (01:07):
I don't get it.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
It's like a supercharged engine.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
Oh I didn't even think about that.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Oh good, that makes me feel a little better.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Yeah, 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 3 (01:21):
Nice hot wheels are pretty great.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Yeah, I had quite a collection, and I don't know
where they are today.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
Oh really they're missing? Huh.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
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 that I
have any value.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
You need to find them. Yeah, they could be apparently,
as far as hot wheels collectors go, it could be
in mint condition all the way down to beat condition.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Oh is that how they rank them? Yeah, mine would
be beaters because I played with them like crazy.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
That's good. 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 a you know,
a new Frankenstein model.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Oh really, Yeah, that's pretty neat.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
There's a lot of stuff you can do with them.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
Yeah, and we should thank the fifth grader who wrote
this article too.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
Sad face.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
I complained about that out loud to Holly. I was like,
this article actually says sad face like as a sentence.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
Yeah, I know had issues. I'm glad you said something.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
Yeah what if it was a fifth grader? Your feelings
are all hurt.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
I think your feelings are hurt either way. Now, sad face.
So we're talking about hot wheels today. I had a couple.
My favorite toy was g I Joe, but I appreciated
hot wheels.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
Yeah, I had GI Joe too.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
We do Gi Joe episode sometime. I had the older
ones though you probably had huge ones. Yeah yeah, now
I had the real ones.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
Yeah, oh yeah, I don't that's fighting words.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
Man. The ones that I had were so awesome. They
were like there was a huge, fast collection of all
of them. Yeah, there was like cobra. Cobra didn't exist
when you were collecting g I Joe's.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
No, but how could you say, like, oh, that one
that's ten inches tall and has real clothes and fuzzy
hair and the kung fu grip is inferior to this
little plastic thing.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
I think you just said it. All the fuzzy hair
says it right there. I don't really mean that, Chuck.
I don't have a dog in that fight. Like if
you like the big Gi Joe's. That's cool. I got
some problems.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Yeah, it's a quick side note. I have to tell
this story, okay, when you know how he used to
do book reports and you would have to have a
visual aid. Yeah. I might have told this before. If
I do, I apologize.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
I don't recognize it.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
I did a report on Franco Harris when in elementary
school because he.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
Was a football player.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
Yeah. I don't know why I did on Franco Harris. Yeah,
but I got my mom to make me a little
Pittsburgh Steelers uniform for my Gi joe because he looked
like Franco Harris.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
Nice.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
Yeah, and that was my visual aid.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
Do you still have it?
Speaker 1 (04:01):
No, of course not. We have the Gi Joe's, but
I think the Steelers uniform is gone. Bye bye.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
That's said. Yeah, you know, I'm sure your mom put
a lot of work into that. Now I feel guilty, 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 it. Kind of It's
astounding until you stop and think about it. Sure, like
(04:29):
apparently since nineteen sixty eight, 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, it costs a minute
fraction of the costure to build the hot wheels and
it does a normal car.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
Plus, Also, it's not like you're gonna go, I want
this Buick Cutlass Supreme in every color, right, you know, Well,
the hot wheels you can do that.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Yeah. What's the Lego stat is? They're the biggest manufacturer
of tires?
Speaker 3 (05:07):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (05:07):
Yeah, I wonder though, do these not count as tires
because they're plastic they counts wheels?
Speaker 3 (05:14):
I don't know, man, because.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
Four billion times four that's sixteen billion tires.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
That's a really great question.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
I might have to challenge Lego or maybe just look
up how many tires they manufacture.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
Old Kirk Christensen is not going to be happy about this.
Who was that the founder of Lego? Oh remember Old?
Speaker 1 (05:31):
Oh that's right, I thought you were saying Old no over.
Oh yeah, So.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
Let's talk about the history of this stuff.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
Huh okay.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
So hot wheels, like I said, have been around since
nineteen sixty eight and Anybody who's heard the Barbie Trademark
podcast will recognize the name Elliott Handler. That's Ruth Handler,
the inventor of Barbie Trademark's husband. Sure, and Elliott apparently
saw a real chance to muscle in on an already
(06:05):
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.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
By the time hot wheels came around, match Box was
already there and had established a market, and Mattel said,
let's get in on that.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
Yeah. And the rumor is that he saw his grandchildren
playing with them and said, they kind of stink. I
could make these better, yeah, cooler, And he had a
as the story goes, had a designer, which we'll talk
about in the second called Harry Bradley Sure, and he
had a hot rod. And Elliott was in the parking
lot one day and said, man, those are some hot
(06:45):
wheels you got there.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
And apparently if you go look look at the old
original commercials.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
For hot wheels, did they say that.
Speaker 3 (06:53):
That's how well, that's how they pronounced it hot wheels.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
Oh, instead of hot wheels.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
Yeah, The emphasis is on the hot awkward. They're like,
race your hot wheels.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
You can make some of them, you can race them.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
Just go buy some hot wheels. That's what they That's
how they say it, collect all your hot wheels.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
Yeah, but that makes more sense in the context of
a sentence.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
It does having been raised right right, you know post
the in fact hot wheels is wrong. Yeah, hot wheels
because wheels.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
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, we can sure waste some time.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
We sure can.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
But the first nineteen sixty eight is, like you said,
when the first line came out of sixteen hot wheels,
they were sold initially for fifty nine cent apiece.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
Yeah, And like you said, the guy whose car originally
inspired the name hot Wheels was Harry Bradley, and he
was the designer of that first sixteen cars. They were
also called California Customs Miniatures. Was that first original sixteen
group of hot Wheels that were released in nineteen sixty eight. So,
(08:13):
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. 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 1 (08:31):
Yeah, the sixty nine Corvette.
Speaker 3 (08:32):
That is 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 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 in releasing the
(08:55):
nineteen sixty eight Corvette.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
Yeah, sixty nine, thank you, that's all right. The Yeah,
as the lore goes, he supposedly knew that the cafeteria
door was unlocked, so he snuck in through the cafeteria door.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
But that's called industrial espionage.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
Yeah, that sounds like a story like just lore, okay,
but maybe so maybe he committed industrial espian che. Yeah. So,
like you said, those were the two of the first
sixteen in that original lineup, that original collection, which if
you have any of those, Yeah, Okay, yeah, you got
(09:32):
some money that you're sitting on.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
Because I mean, like they went all out on those
that original line oh yeah, Like there were bushings to
the suspension. Yeah, and the I mean the chassis it
had suspension like shocks, like you could press them down
and it would bounce back.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
I had some of those. I don't think they were
from sixty eight. But when did they quit making those?
Speaker 3 (09:55):
It set up until seventy seven was when they stopped making.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
The seventy is when the suspension got an overhaul.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
Okay, so for the first couple of years, like they
were really putting a lot into these things. The tires
were red line racing slicks, yeah, and the things. The
whole reason they went to so much trouble is because
they really wanted to destroy their competitor, match box. And
one of the ways they did that was by making
(10:23):
these things far more functional than the match boxes were.
The matchbox cars were, so they really could race. Yeah,
and if you put a matchbox car up against the
comparable hot wheels, say the same model car, the hot
Wheels will destroy it every time. And the head to
head race.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
As we saw on the internet, a guy did that.
Of course, he took two Volkswagens and two OUTI eight's
I think, and one match box and one hot wheel,
and he said they won by at least a car
length every time he tried. And this was no loop
de loop bring things, was just the straight race. They
painted them originally in Spectra Flame, which was very shiny
(11:05):
and sparkly and expensive. And I don't think we said
that all hot wheels are built at one sixty fourth scale.
Speaker 3 (11:12):
Yeah, that's a big point.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
But not necessarily all matchbox cars. They kind of vary
here and there, right, But like you said that Spectra
Flame and the red line tires didn't only last until
seventy seven, and the suspension only lasted untill nineteen seventy
and they sadly a lot of that had to do
with the fact that they moved them from Hawthorne, California
(11:34):
to Hong Kong. Yeah, 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.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
Not only that, it's this Spectra flame pain is pretty expensive.
It's awesome, it looks great, yeah, but it's pretty expensive.
So with any collector's item. 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, Yeah, because there was
(12:08):
fewer and fewer of those as the years go on,
proportionately speaking.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
Yeah, they had actual axles, like you know, it was
like a real They were designed by car designers and
they were made apparently to reach two hundred scale miles
per hour.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
Yeah, that's pretty cool.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
That's way cool.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
Yeah. Remember, like in the Cockroach episode, we talked about
how they're the fastest animal on the planet relatively speaking.
Pretty neat stuff. Yeah, so chuck right out of the gate,
Mattel had a hit on its hands. Oh yes, they
released them in nineteen sixty eight. By nineteen seventy, Hot
Wheels was a Saturday Morning cartoon in the vein of
(12:46):
like Dune Buggy and Scooby Doo and all those guys.
Hanna barbera dune buggy or speed Buggy, Speed Buggy. Yeah
remember speed Buggy. Yeah, it was like a dune buggy
that could talk, and it was basically wonder bug No,
it's speed Buggy. Okay, because there was under if you
took Shaggy and put some like racing goggles on him. Yeah,
(13:08):
and then turned Scooby Doo into a speed a doom Buggy. Yeah,
that's speed Buggy.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
Oh was that a cartoon?
Speaker 3 (13:14):
Yeah, okay, went around solving mysteries and stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
Yeah, wonderbug was I think that was live action?
Speaker 3 (13:20):
Oh, this was a cartoon, 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 Doo.
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.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
Do you know what this prus? What is the nineteen seventies,
the doom Buggy was a very popular thing. You remember
seeing those on the road, Like I used to see
them 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. Nope, No gremlins, no yukos, no,
no wonder bugs.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
You know I like gremlins. Do you okay for me? Though?
The Kudi gras of car design is the AMC Pacer. Yeah,
it's like the for Micah Kitchen of cars. Yeah, it's
beautiful in all the weirdest ways.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
So much window.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
That would be my sought after hot wheels if I
had a hot wheels that if I just could have
one hot wheel, Yeah, it would. I don't know if
that would be it. I'd be happy with that one.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
Now do they have that it's a hot wheel? Oh?
Speaker 3 (14:27):
Yeah, okay, And if you look up AMC Gremlin hot wheels, yeah,
they went to town on those. They had some with
like the intakes like sticking out of the hood and yeah,
just all sorts of just awesome different variations like indie
car Gremlins and stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
Because and that raises a 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
them to actually be able to win a race, like
we talked about with Matchbox.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Yeah, and one of the differences that is one of
the main differences between the match box and the hot
wheel is they were just much more interested in being sportier,
like you could get you could get a match box
like a delivery truck, right, you know they had that,
but the match Boxes looked more real. They all were
about looking realistic and not necessarily performance. And hey, if
(15:22):
you want a bread truck, you can get a bread truck,
right exactly, But you can't get a bread truck hot Wheel.
Speaker 3 (15:26):
You know, we'll talk more about all of this jam
right after this.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
You want to go ahead and talk about some of
the other differences between Matchbox and hot Wheel, Yes, sure,
since we're at it. Match Box or I'm sorry, hot
Wheel is the one that is more likely to have
branded versions, oh man.
Speaker 3 (16:03):
And do they ever like.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
The Ghostbusters ectomobile.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
Right or even more than that, Like they have a
deal with eminem Mars for twenty fifteen, so they have
like a TwixT trucks and a Skittles van and like
all this stuff. They have licensing with DC and Marvel this.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
Year, Fast and the Furious. I know they had a
line yep.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
So 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 you can only get it KB toys.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
Yeah, I think they have a NASCAR deal too. If
I'm not mistaken, I would not be surprised. And the
hot wheels usually have a little bit wider, a longer axle,
and wider wheels because it's just cooler that wheel sticks
out from the body a little bit, you know.
Speaker 3 (16:55):
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 1 (17:02):
Yeah, you might as well ahead and bring that up. Okay,
it looks weird. You can't just shrink it and have
it in the same proportion and have it look normal.
Speaker 3 (17:10):
Right Like, it'll be as far as like shrinking a
car down by scale, it will be in the exact
same proportion. But it's just awful little bit 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, which is why
(17:30):
the wheel stick out some on a hot wheels, but
not on a match box. That's right, because match boxes
are all about realism. To heck with how it looks,
as long as it's real.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
The one of my favorite ones, and I had one
of these that they mentioned this article was the red barren.
The person who wrote this said it was an inexplicable
and inexplicably cool helmet over the cockpit. I don't know
about inexplicable. It was just the roof of the car
was a helmet, right. But I looked it up again, Tod,
and I was like, oh, yeah, I had that thing,
(18:02):
but it was It wasn't a Nazi helmet per se,
but it was that shape of the helmet like the
US oldiers 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
(18:22):
design for war. And it also had a black iron
cross on the side of it.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
Well hence the red baron, right.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
Yeah, but it was It's easy now as an adulta
look and say that looks like a little Nazi hot rod.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
Yeah, but the red baron was World War One. He
was pre Nazi Germany.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
Yeah. And it was also I think at the time
just like looked like the biker gang would wear like
those helmet with the iron cross.
Speaker 3 (18:45):
Yeah, and all of it was Southern California hot rod culture. Yeah,
what gave rise to Hot Wheels, so it makes sense.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
Yeah, I don't think there was any like sartitious intent.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
Yeah. 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. Sure,
the second release they had I think twenty.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
Two new cars, yeah, thirty three total.
Speaker 3 (19:13):
And then the third year they had another. They released
thirty three after that, right.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
Oh no, yeah, I'm sorry, thirty three by nineteen seventy.
Speaker 3 (19:21):
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.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
So kids were going crazy for it. And another way
that Mattel very wisely targeted children was to get in
with fast food. In nineteen seventy, the first Hot Wheels
came out as a toy at Jack in the Boxes.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Oh really Yeah.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
The big one though, the one that put them over
the top, was in nineteen eighty three when kids who
were lucky enough to be taken to McDonald's for dinner.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
The happy meal exactly hot Wheel.
Speaker 3 (20:01):
Which is what they called of at the time, Uh,
or could get one of fourteen hot wheels. Yeah, in
nineteen eighty three, and they had some cool once. They
had a Chevy citation.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
Did they really?
Speaker 3 (20:13):
Yeah, they had one that was one of my favorite. Actually.
It was a Toyota Mini Trek, which is like a
station wagon camper and it even said painted on the side,
good time Camper that you could get in your happy meal,
which if I could have one hot wheel, it would
probably be that.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
You know what they were doing now that I look
back through my adult.
Speaker 3 (20:35):
Eyes, like snorting pot.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
No, they were giving you a bunch of crappy ones
because you wanted to keep coming back to get the
cool one.
Speaker 3 (20:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
Probably you're like, ah, I got a citation, 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 3 (20:55):
What did you think they were doing with happy Meals?
Speaker 1 (20:58):
Well, I mean, I know it was all manipulation to
get you to try and own all of them, right,
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, you feel jipped off and you really
want to go back and get one of the hot rods. Yeah,
it's my eyes are wide open, my friends.
Speaker 3 (21:19):
Well, that's why our friends down under in Australia have
like outlawed marketing directly to children, which I think is
a fantastic mode. 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
(21:40):
psychologically defend themselves from being like bombarded with 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 1 (21:52):
The traffic keeper.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
What do they make a law?
Speaker 3 (21:56):
Yeah? Really yeah, it's a big one, very progressive law.
Big all countries should adopt.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
Well. In nineteen eighty three, I agree wholeheartedly. By the way,
in nineteen eighty three is when that happy meal thing happened.
And also the same year they moved from Hong Kong
to Malaysia, and it said that's when they added their
economy cars, so that must have coincided with the citation.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
Yeah, the citation man one of the most disappointing Happy
Meal toys you could possibly.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
Get, Yeah, because it reminded you of your dad, who
drove a citation.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
Right, who was always mad.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
Yeah, oh, dear so Chuckers.
Speaker 3 (22:38):
Yes, After nineteen eighty three, not a lot happened. Hot
Oils just kept going on, expanding more and more and more.
I think they had another Happy Meals joint in ninety
one or something like that. And in nineteen ninety five
they said, we need, we need to do something big,
and they did. They were at least something called Treasure
(23:01):
Hunt series, which was a purposefully limited release car series
of cars. Yeah. I think they did twelve models at
ten thousand each originally, and hence the name Treasure Hunt.
They are hard to find.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
Yeah, And one of the cooler ones for me was
the Oldsmobile for forty two.
Speaker 3 (23:22):
Yeah. The thing is neat.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
A dude at my church had a four forty two
and it was just awesome, man. He was he had
like the 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,
(23:44):
no went, He still got it.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
Oh yeah, why would you get rid of it?
Speaker 1 (23:47):
He still has the car. 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 nineteen eighty six and just it's juiced up
and he's just gre 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
hundred feet of drag. He would lay like power breaking
(24:10):
and he would get like four sets of tires a year.
Speaker 3 (24:13):
He'd be in the passenger seat going saved me Jesus.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
Yeah, I was very scared because I was you know,
I didn't flirt with the wild side back then.
Speaker 3 (24:23):
No, so Oldsmobile four forty two is as close as
you got.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
Yep. It was exhilarating.
Speaker 3 (24:28):
And then so that was nineteen ninety five. This treasure
Hunt thing kind of went. It didn't go exactly as plan.
Mattel was like, oh, we could make even more money
if we put these into a wider release. Yeah, So
the original ten thousand releases were redoing again and again
and again. So treasure hunt kind of became commonplace, sure,
but it was a good idea and it tapped into
(24:51):
this whole idea of collecting. Like Mattel 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,
but just to kind of button up the history of
Hot Wheels, it all came full circle in nineteen ninety
six when Mattel bought Tycho and hence Hot Wheels bought Matchbox.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
So they're all owned by Mattel at this point. Yes,
all right, we'll get to the design and collecting it
right after this. So back then, if you wanted to
(25:40):
do a smaller version of a larger car and scale
it down, 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 yeah, and just take
some measurements and then you know, be good at math,
(26:02):
right basically.
Speaker 3 (26:03):
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 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.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
That's the Mount Rushmore of hot wheels pretty much.
Speaker 3 (26:22):
Yeah and yeah. They would just 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 match Box is that there are
hot Wheels that only exist in the Hot Wheels world.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:43):
They they are called the fantasy cars, like they're just
the designer's imagination come to life.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
Right Whereas match Box only I believe, has bread trucks exactly, Well,
they only have cars that are based on real cars,
right right.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
Hot Wheels has a whole fantasy line.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
It's interesting that they're owned byes of the same company
still and they just have kept that distinction. Yeah, you know,
I guess some people are Matchbox kids and some kids
are Hot Wheels kids. I had both. I think I
had a bread truck.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
Is that why you keep going to the bread truck?
Speaker 1 (27:18):
Well, no, I didn't have a bread truck, but I
do remember having a couple of like weird utility type vehicles.
Huh huh. That I don't remember. There were probably gifts
or stocking stuffers or something.
Speaker 3 (27:28):
Huh.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
I don't think I like sought it out.
Speaker 3 (27:30):
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
that Volvo dump truck, the giant one, yeah, 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.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
I didn't have a lot of Tonka stuff. One of
my favorite hot wheels though, was the little red Express truck.
Speaker 3 (27:57):
I don't remember that if.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
You saw it, you might it might a bell that
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 vertical mufflers on each side that
went up above the truck.
Speaker 3 (28:14):
I think I know what you're talking about.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
Yeah, yeah, it's really cool. And if you go to
the the 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, a
line 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. Yeah, and I
(28:37):
saw it and I was like.
Speaker 3 (28:37):
Whoa, did you just die from nostalgia?
Speaker 1 (28:41):
Look might have teered up a little bit at the desk,
but they have, you know, the the gussied up corvettes
with the big chrome engines coming out of the hood.
Speaker 3 (28:50):
And do they have the four to four to two.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
I don't know if they have the four forty two.
Speaker 3 (28:54):
But I'm very well, when your friend dies, but it's
in his will.
Speaker 1 (28:59):
I'll go straight to the muse. Yeah, I'm gonna go
to this thing though at some point I don't know,
on this next LA trip or not. But it's right
there near the labri of tarpets. I think, oh yeah,
so I want to go check it out.
Speaker 3 (29:09):
I've been there. Yeah, it's neat.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
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 even get a
three D printer to your prototype.
Speaker 3 (29:24):
That had to have helped them tremendously. Yeah, 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. Sure, and once they have the the prototype done,
they'll make them. They'll make a mold out of it
and then inject it with molten metal under tremendous pressure. Yeah,
(29:48):
and that's why it's called die cast. You create a
dye that you cast all of the ensuing ones from.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
Yeah, and I think they're made with less metal than
they used to be, but they they still have metal components, right.
Oh yeah, I haven't seen a new one in a while.
Speaker 3 (30:03):
I haven't either, but I'm almost positive they do. And
apparently they're still about like a dollar. Oh really Yeah.
I was on the Hot Wheels collector site today and
like they kept making reference to about a dollar. So
just what's called the mainline? Yeah, the ones that they
make on mass.
Speaker 1 (30:19):
The citation exactly.
Speaker 3 (30:21):
I'll bet if you've got your hands on that nineteen
eighty three citation it'd be worth a few books. You're right,
but they kept referring to the mainline stuff about a dollar.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
Well, they've just kept making their manufacturing cheaper and cheaper,
so they've maintained that cost. I guess. Yeah. So as
far as collecting goes, the most valuable and that is
not this crazy one made out of diamonds for the
fortieth anniversary, which we'll talk about in a minute, But
the most valuable regular hot wheel is the sixty eight
(30:53):
beach Bomb, which was a VW bus and hot pink
that had real surfboard stick it out of the back.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
Yeah. Originally they only released I think twenty five of
them like that. There were a couple of problems. It
was difficult to manufacture them with the surfboard sticking on
the back, even though it was more realistic sure, and
it also was terrible on like a loopy loop track, yeah,
because I guess the surfboards would either way them down
or it would get stuck. So they only made just
(31:22):
a few of these things. The beach Bomb that was
the highest selling the hogh Wheels ever, was a pink one.
They made even fewer of those because apparently a lot
of boys were like, oh, I'm not playing with some
pink van, even if it does have cool surfboards sticking
out of the back. So the thing sold for like,
I think seventy something seventy five thousand dollars in two thousand,
(31:45):
and it has since sold again in twenty eleven. I
saw in like LA magazine for like one hundred and
twenty five thousand.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
Yeah, it's a lot of money for a tiny little car.
Speaker 3 (31:55):
Yeah it is. And that's the highest one ever apparently
by a long shot too.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
Yeah. I mean I've seen others that were worth like
ten grand and stuff, Like I think one of those
four to forty two originals is like ten grand.
Speaker 3 (32:09):
Yeah, I guess like nineteen seventy mongoose or cobra are
worth about ten grand these days, and a lot of them,
just like with any collector's item, you'll see if there
was just a few of them made, obviously they're gonna
be worth a lot more if there was something that
where they adjusted the design, like for example, the python
(32:32):
was originally called the Cheetah. Yeah, and then they found
out that a real life executive with real life lawyers
at GM owned the name Cheetah, because apparently GM executives
just owned names for cars that could potentially be.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
Used like every anifast animal name.
Speaker 3 (32:47):
Right, exactly. Yeah, so they changed it to the python,
but that was after they'd started manufacturing the cheetah. So
there's some out there that say Cheetah stamped on the bottom,
and if you have one of those, it's for ten.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
Yeah, it's funny to think about. It's the same with
Star Wars, 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 because
the Boba FET's rocket really shot out before kids started
joking on them, right or catching on fire. Yeah, and
that's the one you want. Yeah, But like you said,
it's all about scarcity and supplying to man.
Speaker 3 (33:22):
Dude. This whole thing is reminded me of a really
great gallery I put together about hilarious knockoff toys.
Speaker 1 (33:29):
Oh that's a good one.
Speaker 3 (33:31):
Yeah, go to stuff youshould 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
trademark law. Maybe or something or else. They just fully
don't understand the toy and what it's a lure is,
(33:53):
so they just make it in this weird interpretation. It's
pretty hilarious stuff.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
Yeah, it's a good one. We'll post that again, okay.
And then I did mention the diamond studded one. I
always think these things are just ridiculous. But like to
take any like of the diamond studded bras it was worth,
you know, oh yeah, for million bucks. I just always
think it's kind of dumb. But they did make a
fortieth anniversary in edition in nineteen I'm sorry, in two
(34:19):
thousand and eight with twenty seven hundred little diamonds and
rubies for tail lights and black diamonds for the tires
and all that stuff. Eighteen care at white cold body.
But it's where the one hundred and forty or it costs
one hundred and forty thousand dollars to put together.
Speaker 3 (34:37):
I'm sure it's gaudy. It's a gaudy hot wheels. Yeah,
so the car's cool. It looks like Mad Max's car.
Speaker 1 (34:43):
Oh you get is that a picture of it?
Speaker 3 (34:45):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (34:45):
I don't think I saw that.
Speaker 3 (34:47):
Can you identify that car? Uh?
Speaker 1 (34:50):
What is that looks familiar? It does look familiar to
its sort of like a Dolorean, but I don't think
it is.
Speaker 3 (34:55):
I don't think so either.
Speaker 1 (34:57):
No, man, that new Mad Max looks good though.
Speaker 3 (35:00):
Are you making Mad Max?
Speaker 1 (35:01):
Well, there's a new reboot I guess is what they
call it these days?
Speaker 3 (35:06):
Cool? Who's in it?
Speaker 1 (35:08):
What's his face that played Bain So? Yeah, Tom, Tom?
What's no? But uh, it looks it's the same director,
Tom Hardy. Yeah, Tom Hardy. But it's the same director
from all the Mad Max series. So it's oh really yeah, yeah,
yeah wow, And it just looks it's the whole it's
(35:28):
supposed to be just like one long intense chase battle.
Speaker 3 (35:34):
Yeah, sounds a lot like a Mad Max movie.
Speaker 1 (35:37):
Yep, what you want?
Speaker 3 (35:37):
Have you ever seen Vanishing Point?
Speaker 1 (35:41):
I think so? What is that?
Speaker 3 (35:42):
It was? Like, Man, I can't remember the car, but
the car was basically the Star. It was on long
car chase from like I think Colorado to California.
Speaker 1 (35:53):
Yeah, I remember that.
Speaker 3 (35:54):
It's a good one from the seventies.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
Yeah, two lane Blacktops Challenger.
Speaker 3 (35:58):
It's another the car. Yeah, I haven't seen that one.
Speaker 1 (36:02):
Yeah, that's good. When that one weirdly had James Taylor
in it when he was young and like on drugs
and cool.
Speaker 3 (36:10):
Were they apologizing to France?
Speaker 1 (36:13):
I don't know what they deal was.
Speaker 3 (36:14):
Did you hear about that? No, so that whole Charlie
Hebdoh Solidarity March the US sent like, yeah, I think
the assistant that could be in charge of the USDA
or something like that. Yeah, So to apologize, John Carey
had James Taylor go to France to perform. You've got
a French shut up for the French government.
Speaker 1 (36:38):
Yeah, just talk about beer. I know, isn't it send
guns n' roses or something at least well not guns n'
roses from nineteen eighty eight.
Speaker 3 (36:50):
Any guns n' 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 nineteen eighty seven to
my hometown of Toledo, Ohio, which is where the first
ever hot Wheels Convention Collector's Convention was held. I really
(37:15):
wish I would have gone to that because I was
there at the time. What year was it, eighty seven?
Speaker 1 (37:20):
Oh? Yeah, yeah, I can't believe we sent James Tayler
still just like, yeah, I can't focus on anything.
Speaker 3 (37:26):
Well, if you want to know more about James Taylor,
hot wheels, or just about anything there is in the universe,
you can type it into the search bar at HowStuffWorks
dot com. And since I said search, bart's time for
listener mail.
Speaker 1 (37:40):
I'm gonna call this minimum wage argument not argument proposal.
Speaker 3 (37:45):
All right.
Speaker 1 (37:46):
Listened to How Homelessness Works from quite a few years ago,
and you guys commented that part of the problem was
a low minimum wage. In comparison the cost of renting
a two bedroom apartment, you'd have to work something like
eighty seven per hours eighty seven hours per week to
afford it, the implication we need to raise minimum wage.
After hearing this, a clear solution occurred to me. I
think disagreements on raising minimum wage as a result with
(38:08):
simple misunderstanding. 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. On
the don't raise it side, people believe minimum wage is
just a starting point for working, like for teenagers, at
their summer job or after school. This ide believes workers
(38:30):
should were never intended to 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 it's a nation that someone should be able
to raise a family rent a two bedroom apartment while
(38:51):
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.
Let's say it's twenty seven grand per year, then set
it at that rate. On the other hand, if we
as a nation decide that minimum wage is just a
starting point, not meant to support a family. It's intended
for people with no work history or experience and low
(39:13):
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 settle,
any argument about setting minimum wage at a living wage
would be mistaken because we all just decided that people
(39:36):
are not meant to live on minimum wage and certainly
not meant to support a family. That is from Joe
Prohaska in Reno, Nevada, and its interesting. I look forward
to seeing the rebuttal emails.
Speaker 3 (39:49):
Yeah, I love that kind of stuff. Yeah, it's a
great proposal. I mean, I think that is what it's
based on.
Speaker 1 (39:55):
Sure, but as far.
Speaker 3 (39:56):
As I know, the cost of living calculations are really
date Yeah, and take a lot of stuff into account
that doesn't really apply any longer.
Speaker 1 (40:04):
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 3 (40:14):
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. At
the very least you get everybody talking.
Speaker 1 (40:25):
Yeah, because should some teenager at his first job make
like fourteen bucks an hour?
Speaker 3 (40:28):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (40:29):
I don't know if that's sending the right message either.
Speaker 3 (40:31):
I don't know. I don't know we'll leave it up
to you guys, our dear listeners.
Speaker 1 (40:37):
When I started working, it was like three bucks an
hour or something. It was ridiculously low.
Speaker 3 (40:41):
That is ridiculously low. Yeah, if you want to let
us know how you feel about Joe's proposal, was it Joe?
Speaker 1 (40:50):
I believe it was Joe Reno, Joe Reno Joe.
Speaker 3 (40:54):
You can tweet to us at sysk podcast. You can
post it on Facebook dot com, slash Stuff you Should Know.
You can put it in an email. It's stuff podcast
at HowStuffWorks dot com, and just for kicks, you can
hang around our home on the web Stuff you Should
Know dot com.
Speaker 2 (41:14):
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
HowStuffWorks dot com.
Speaker 1 (41:25):
Hey, friends, just want to let you know our friends
at Squarespace have partnered with the dude Jeff Bridges and
a really cool thing called www dot Dreaming with Jeff
dot com. And this is something Jeff Bridges actually came
up with. It's a project where he has his friends
in various locations around LA with these cool relaxing sounds
and guided meditations and stories designed to lull you asleep.
(41:46):
It's really neat. And he's also the Face of No
Kid Hungry, which is a great charity group you should
look into. So check out ww dot Dreaming with Jeff
dot Com and see what the dude in squarespace has
going on.
A everybody chuck Here for another one of our Christmas
centric episodes with our twelve Days of Christmas Toys playlist,
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. Pretty
interesting story. Hope you guys enjoy it.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Welcome to Stuff you should know from HowStuffWorks dot com.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's
Charles w Chuck Bryant, and Jerry.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
You know that just sounded like, what like, that's what
happens like, You're having a nightmare and you MEI 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.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Repart. That's true. Yeah, that is what that sounded like.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
That's what it sounded.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
It's pretty accurate. I don't know what got into me.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
You were just supercharged about this topic.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
Oh that's terrible. What supercharged?
Speaker 1 (01:07):
I don't get it.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
It's like a supercharged engine.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
Oh I didn't even think about that.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Oh good, that makes me feel a little better.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Yeah, 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 3 (01:21):
Nice hot wheels are pretty great.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Yeah, I had quite a collection, and I don't know
where they are today.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
Oh really they're missing? Huh.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
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 that I
have any value.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
You need to find them. Yeah, they could be apparently,
as far as hot wheels collectors go, it could be
in mint condition all the way down to beat condition.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Oh is that how they rank them? Yeah, mine would
be beaters because I played with them like crazy.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
That's good. 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 a you know,
a new Frankenstein model.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Oh really, Yeah, that's pretty neat.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
There's a lot of stuff you can do with them.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
Yeah, and we should thank the fifth grader who wrote
this article too.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
Sad face.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
I complained about that out loud to Holly. I was like,
this article actually says sad face like as a sentence.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
Yeah, I know had issues. I'm glad you said something.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
Yeah what if it was a fifth grader? Your feelings
are all hurt.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
I think your feelings are hurt either way. Now, sad face.
So we're talking about hot wheels today. I had a couple.
My favorite toy was g I Joe, but I appreciated
hot wheels.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
Yeah, I had GI Joe too.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
We do Gi Joe episode sometime. I had the older
ones though you probably had huge ones. Yeah yeah, now
I had the real ones.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
Yeah, oh yeah, I don't that's fighting words.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
Man. The ones that I had were so awesome. They
were like there was a huge, fast collection of all
of them. Yeah, there was like cobra. Cobra didn't exist
when you were collecting g I Joe's.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
No, but how could you say, like, oh, that one
that's ten inches tall and has real clothes and fuzzy
hair and the kung fu grip is inferior to this
little plastic thing.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
I think you just said it. All the fuzzy hair
says it right there. I don't really mean that, Chuck.
I don't have a dog in that fight. Like if
you like the big Gi Joe's. That's cool. I got
some problems.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Yeah, it's a quick side note. I have to tell
this story, okay, when you know how he used to
do book reports and you would have to have a
visual aid. Yeah. I might have told this before. If
I do, I apologize.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
I don't recognize it.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
I did a report on Franco Harris when in elementary
school because he.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
Was a football player.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
Yeah. I don't know why I did on Franco Harris. Yeah,
but I got my mom to make me a little
Pittsburgh Steelers uniform for my Gi joe because he looked
like Franco Harris.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
Nice.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
Yeah, and that was my visual aid.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
Do you still have it?
Speaker 1 (04:01):
No, of course not. We have the Gi Joe's, but
I think the Steelers uniform is gone. Bye bye.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
That's said. Yeah, you know, I'm sure your mom put
a lot of work into that. Now I feel guilty, 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 it. Kind of It's
astounding until you stop and think about it. Sure, like
(04:29):
apparently since nineteen sixty eight, 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, it costs a minute
fraction of the costure to build the hot wheels and
it does a normal car.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
Plus, Also, it's not like you're gonna go, I want
this Buick Cutlass Supreme in every color, right, you know, Well,
the hot wheels you can do that.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Yeah. What's the Lego stat is? They're the biggest manufacturer
of tires?
Speaker 3 (05:07):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (05:07):
Yeah, I wonder though, do these not count as tires
because they're plastic they counts wheels?
Speaker 3 (05:14):
I don't know, man, because.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
Four billion times four that's sixteen billion tires.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
That's a really great question.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
I might have to challenge Lego or maybe just look
up how many tires they manufacture.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
Old Kirk Christensen is not going to be happy about this.
Who was that the founder of Lego? Oh remember Old?
Speaker 1 (05:31):
Oh that's right, I thought you were saying Old no over.
Oh yeah, So.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
Let's talk about the history of this stuff.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
Huh okay.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
So hot wheels, like I said, have been around since
nineteen sixty eight and Anybody who's heard the Barbie Trademark
podcast will recognize the name Elliott Handler. That's Ruth Handler,
the inventor of Barbie Trademark's husband. Sure, and Elliott apparently
saw a real chance to muscle in on an already
(06:05):
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.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
By the time hot wheels came around, match Box was
already there and had established a market, and Mattel said,
let's get in on that.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
Yeah. And the rumor is that he saw his grandchildren
playing with them and said, they kind of stink. I
could make these better, yeah, cooler, And he had a
as the story goes, had a designer, which we'll talk
about in the second called Harry Bradley Sure, and he
had a hot rod. And Elliott was in the parking
lot one day and said, man, those are some hot
(06:45):
wheels you got there.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
And apparently if you go look look at the old
original commercials.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
For hot wheels, did they say that.
Speaker 3 (06:53):
That's how well, that's how they pronounced it hot wheels.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
Oh, instead of hot wheels.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
Yeah, The emphasis is on the hot awkward. They're like,
race your hot wheels.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
You can make some of them, you can race them.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
Just go buy some hot wheels. That's what they That's
how they say it, collect all your hot wheels.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
Yeah, but that makes more sense in the context of
a sentence.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
It does having been raised right right, you know post
the in fact hot wheels is wrong. Yeah, hot wheels
because wheels.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
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, we can sure waste some time.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
We sure can.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
But the first nineteen sixty eight is, like you said,
when the first line came out of sixteen hot wheels,
they were sold initially for fifty nine cent apiece.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
Yeah, And like you said, the guy whose car originally
inspired the name hot Wheels was Harry Bradley, and he
was the designer of that first sixteen cars. They were
also called California Customs Miniatures. Was that first original sixteen
group of hot Wheels that were released in nineteen sixty eight. So,
(08:13):
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. 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 1 (08:31):
Yeah, the sixty nine Corvette.
Speaker 3 (08:32):
That is 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 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 in releasing the
(08:55):
nineteen sixty eight Corvette.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
Yeah, sixty nine, thank you, that's all right. The Yeah,
as the lore goes, he supposedly knew that the cafeteria
door was unlocked, so he snuck in through the cafeteria door.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
But that's called industrial espionage.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
Yeah, that sounds like a story like just lore, okay,
but maybe so maybe he committed industrial espian che. Yeah. So,
like you said, those were the two of the first
sixteen in that original lineup, that original collection, which if
you have any of those, Yeah, Okay, yeah, you got
(09:32):
some money that you're sitting on.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
Because I mean, like they went all out on those
that original line oh yeah, Like there were bushings to
the suspension. Yeah, and the I mean the chassis it
had suspension like shocks, like you could press them down
and it would bounce back.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
I had some of those. I don't think they were
from sixty eight. But when did they quit making those?
Speaker 3 (09:55):
It set up until seventy seven was when they stopped making.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
The seventy is when the suspension got an overhaul.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
Okay, so for the first couple of years, like they
were really putting a lot into these things. The tires
were red line racing slicks, yeah, and the things. The
whole reason they went to so much trouble is because
they really wanted to destroy their competitor, match box. And
one of the ways they did that was by making
(10:23):
these things far more functional than the match boxes were.
The matchbox cars were, so they really could race. Yeah,
and if you put a matchbox car up against the
comparable hot wheels, say the same model car, the hot
Wheels will destroy it every time. And the head to
head race.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
As we saw on the internet, a guy did that.
Of course, he took two Volkswagens and two OUTI eight's
I think, and one match box and one hot wheel,
and he said they won by at least a car
length every time he tried. And this was no loop
de loop bring things, was just the straight race. They
painted them originally in Spectra Flame, which was very shiny
(11:05):
and sparkly and expensive. And I don't think we said
that all hot wheels are built at one sixty fourth scale.
Speaker 3 (11:12):
Yeah, that's a big point.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
But not necessarily all matchbox cars. They kind of vary
here and there, right, But like you said that Spectra
Flame and the red line tires didn't only last until
seventy seven, and the suspension only lasted untill nineteen seventy
and they sadly a lot of that had to do
with the fact that they moved them from Hawthorne, California
(11:34):
to Hong Kong. Yeah, 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.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
Not only that, it's this Spectra flame pain is pretty expensive.
It's awesome, it looks great, yeah, but it's pretty expensive.
So with any collector's item. 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, Yeah, because there was
(12:08):
fewer and fewer of those as the years go on,
proportionately speaking.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
Yeah, they had actual axles, like you know, it was
like a real They were designed by car designers and
they were made apparently to reach two hundred scale miles
per hour.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
Yeah, that's pretty cool.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
That's way cool.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
Yeah. Remember, like in the Cockroach episode, we talked about
how they're the fastest animal on the planet relatively speaking.
Pretty neat stuff. Yeah, so chuck right out of the gate,
Mattel had a hit on its hands. Oh yes, they
released them in nineteen sixty eight. By nineteen seventy, Hot
Wheels was a Saturday Morning cartoon in the vein of
(12:46):
like Dune Buggy and Scooby Doo and all those guys.
Hanna barbera dune buggy or speed Buggy, Speed Buggy. Yeah
remember speed Buggy. Yeah, it was like a dune buggy
that could talk, and it was basically wonder bug No,
it's speed Buggy. Okay, because there was under if you
took Shaggy and put some like racing goggles on him. Yeah,
(13:08):
and then turned Scooby Doo into a speed a doom Buggy. Yeah,
that's speed Buggy.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
Oh was that a cartoon?
Speaker 3 (13:14):
Yeah, okay, went around solving mysteries and stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
Yeah, wonderbug was I think that was live action?
Speaker 3 (13:20):
Oh, this was a cartoon, 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 Doo.
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.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
Do you know what this prus? What is the nineteen seventies,
the doom Buggy was a very popular thing. You remember
seeing those on the road, Like I used to see
them 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. Nope, No gremlins, no yukos, no,
no wonder bugs.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
You know I like gremlins. Do you okay for me? Though?
The Kudi gras of car design is the AMC Pacer. Yeah,
it's like the for Micah Kitchen of cars. Yeah, it's
beautiful in all the weirdest ways.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
So much window.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
That would be my sought after hot wheels if I
had a hot wheels that if I just could have
one hot wheel, Yeah, it would. I don't know if
that would be it. I'd be happy with that one.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
Now do they have that it's a hot wheel? Oh?
Speaker 3 (14:27):
Yeah, okay, And if you look up AMC Gremlin hot wheels, yeah,
they went to town on those. They had some with
like the intakes like sticking out of the hood and yeah,
just all sorts of just awesome different variations like indie
car Gremlins and stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
Because and that raises a 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
them to actually be able to win a race, like
we talked about with Matchbox.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Yeah, and one of the differences that is one of
the main differences between the match box and the hot
wheel is they were just much more interested in being sportier,
like you could get you could get a match box
like a delivery truck, right, you know they had that,
but the match Boxes looked more real. They all were
about looking realistic and not necessarily performance. And hey, if
(15:22):
you want a bread truck, you can get a bread truck,
right exactly, But you can't get a bread truck hot Wheel.
Speaker 3 (15:26):
You know, we'll talk more about all of this jam
right after this.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
You want to go ahead and talk about some of
the other differences between Matchbox and hot Wheel, Yes, sure,
since we're at it. Match Box or I'm sorry, hot
Wheel is the one that is more likely to have
branded versions, oh man.
Speaker 3 (16:03):
And do they ever like.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
The Ghostbusters ectomobile.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
Right or even more than that, Like they have a
deal with eminem Mars for twenty fifteen, so they have
like a TwixT trucks and a Skittles van and like
all this stuff. They have licensing with DC and Marvel this.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
Year, Fast and the Furious. I know they had a
line yep.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
So 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 you can only get it KB toys.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
Yeah, I think they have a NASCAR deal too. If
I'm not mistaken, I would not be surprised. And the
hot wheels usually have a little bit wider, a longer axle,
and wider wheels because it's just cooler that wheel sticks
out from the body a little bit, you know.
Speaker 3 (16:55):
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 1 (17:02):
Yeah, you might as well ahead and bring that up. Okay,
it looks weird. You can't just shrink it and have
it in the same proportion and have it look normal.
Speaker 3 (17:10):
Right Like, it'll be as far as like shrinking a
car down by scale, it will be in the exact
same proportion. But it's just awful little bit 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, which is why
(17:30):
the wheel stick out some on a hot wheels, but
not on a match box. That's right, because match boxes
are all about realism. To heck with how it looks,
as long as it's real.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
The one of my favorite ones, and I had one
of these that they mentioned this article was the red barren.
The person who wrote this said it was an inexplicable
and inexplicably cool helmet over the cockpit. I don't know
about inexplicable. It was just the roof of the car
was a helmet, right. But I looked it up again, Tod,
and I was like, oh, yeah, I had that thing,
(18:02):
but it was It wasn't a Nazi helmet per se,
but it was that shape of the helmet like the
US oldiers 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
(18:22):
design for war. And it also had a black iron
cross on the side of it.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
Well hence the red baron, right.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
Yeah, but it was It's easy now as an adulta
look and say that looks like a little Nazi hot rod.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
Yeah, but the red baron was World War One. He
was pre Nazi Germany.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
Yeah. And it was also I think at the time
just like looked like the biker gang would wear like
those helmet with the iron cross.
Speaker 3 (18:45):
Yeah, and all of it was Southern California hot rod culture. Yeah,
what gave rise to Hot Wheels, so it makes sense.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
Yeah, I don't think there was any like sartitious intent.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
Yeah. 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. Sure,
the second release they had I think twenty.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
Two new cars, yeah, thirty three total.
Speaker 3 (19:13):
And then the third year they had another. They released
thirty three after that, right.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
Oh no, yeah, I'm sorry, thirty three by nineteen seventy.
Speaker 3 (19:21):
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.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
So kids were going crazy for it. And another way
that Mattel very wisely targeted children was to get in
with fast food. In nineteen seventy, the first Hot Wheels
came out as a toy at Jack in the Boxes.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Oh really Yeah.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
The big one though, the one that put them over
the top, was in nineteen eighty three when kids who
were lucky enough to be taken to McDonald's for dinner.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
The happy meal exactly hot Wheel.
Speaker 3 (20:01):
Which is what they called of at the time, Uh,
or could get one of fourteen hot wheels. Yeah, in
nineteen eighty three, and they had some cool once. They
had a Chevy citation.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
Did they really?
Speaker 3 (20:13):
Yeah, they had one that was one of my favorite. Actually.
It was a Toyota Mini Trek, which is like a
station wagon camper and it even said painted on the side,
good time Camper that you could get in your happy meal,
which if I could have one hot wheel, it would
probably be that.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
You know what they were doing now that I look
back through my adult.
Speaker 3 (20:35):
Eyes, like snorting pot.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
No, they were giving you a bunch of crappy ones
because you wanted to keep coming back to get the
cool one.
Speaker 3 (20:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
Probably you're like, ah, I got a citation, 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 3 (20:55):
What did you think they were doing with happy Meals?
Speaker 1 (20:58):
Well, I mean, I know it was all manipulation to
get you to try and own all of them, right,
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, you feel jipped off and you really
want to go back and get one of the hot rods. Yeah,
it's my eyes are wide open, my friends.
Speaker 3 (21:19):
Well, that's why our friends down under in Australia have
like outlawed marketing directly to children, which I think is
a fantastic mode. 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
(21:40):
psychologically defend themselves from being like bombarded with 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 1 (21:52):
The traffic keeper.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
What do they make a law?
Speaker 3 (21:56):
Yeah? Really yeah, it's a big one, very progressive law.
Big all countries should adopt.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
Well. In nineteen eighty three, I agree wholeheartedly. By the way,
in nineteen eighty three is when that happy meal thing happened.
And also the same year they moved from Hong Kong
to Malaysia, and it said that's when they added their
economy cars, so that must have coincided with the citation.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
Yeah, the citation man one of the most disappointing Happy
Meal toys you could possibly.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
Get, Yeah, because it reminded you of your dad, who
drove a citation.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
Right, who was always mad.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
Yeah, oh, dear so Chuckers.
Speaker 3 (22:38):
Yes, After nineteen eighty three, not a lot happened. Hot
Oils just kept going on, expanding more and more and more.
I think they had another Happy Meals joint in ninety
one or something like that. And in nineteen ninety five
they said, we need, we need to do something big,
and they did. They were at least something called Treasure
(23:01):
Hunt series, which was a purposefully limited release car series
of cars. Yeah. I think they did twelve models at
ten thousand each originally, and hence the name Treasure Hunt.
They are hard to find.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
Yeah, And one of the cooler ones for me was
the Oldsmobile for forty two.
Speaker 3 (23:22):
Yeah. The thing is neat.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
A dude at my church had a four forty two
and it was just awesome, man. He was he had
like the 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,
(23:44):
no went, He still got it.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
Oh yeah, why would you get rid of it?
Speaker 1 (23:47):
He still has the car. 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 nineteen eighty six and just it's juiced up
and he's just gre 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
hundred feet of drag. He would lay like power breaking
(24:10):
and he would get like four sets of tires a year.
Speaker 3 (24:13):
He'd be in the passenger seat going saved me Jesus.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
Yeah, I was very scared because I was you know,
I didn't flirt with the wild side back then.
Speaker 3 (24:23):
No, so Oldsmobile four forty two is as close as
you got.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
Yep. It was exhilarating.
Speaker 3 (24:28):
And then so that was nineteen ninety five. This treasure
Hunt thing kind of went. It didn't go exactly as plan.
Mattel was like, oh, we could make even more money
if we put these into a wider release. Yeah, So
the original ten thousand releases were redoing again and again
and again. So treasure hunt kind of became commonplace, sure,
but it was a good idea and it tapped into
(24:51):
this whole idea of collecting. Like Mattel 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,
but just to kind of button up the history of
Hot Wheels, it all came full circle in nineteen ninety
six when Mattel bought Tycho and hence Hot Wheels bought Matchbox.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
So they're all owned by Mattel at this point. Yes,
all right, we'll get to the design and collecting it
right after this. So back then, if you wanted to
(25:40):
do a smaller version of a larger car and scale
it down, 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 yeah, and just take
some measurements and then you know, be good at math,
(26:02):
right basically.
Speaker 3 (26:03):
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 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.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
That's the Mount Rushmore of hot wheels pretty much.
Speaker 3 (26:22):
Yeah and yeah. They would just 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 match Box is that there are
hot Wheels that only exist in the Hot Wheels world.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:43):
They they are called the fantasy cars, like they're just
the designer's imagination come to life.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
Right Whereas match Box only I believe, has bread trucks exactly, Well,
they only have cars that are based on real cars,
right right.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
Hot Wheels has a whole fantasy line.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
It's interesting that they're owned byes of the same company
still and they just have kept that distinction. Yeah, you know,
I guess some people are Matchbox kids and some kids
are Hot Wheels kids. I had both. I think I
had a bread truck.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
Is that why you keep going to the bread truck?
Speaker 1 (27:18):
Well, no, I didn't have a bread truck, but I
do remember having a couple of like weird utility type vehicles.
Huh huh. That I don't remember. There were probably gifts
or stocking stuffers or something.
Speaker 3 (27:28):
Huh.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
I don't think I like sought it out.
Speaker 3 (27:30):
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
that Volvo dump truck, the giant one, yeah, 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.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
I didn't have a lot of Tonka stuff. One of
my favorite hot wheels though, was the little red Express truck.
Speaker 3 (27:57):
I don't remember that if.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
You saw it, you might it might a bell that
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 vertical mufflers on each side that
went up above the truck.
Speaker 3 (28:14):
I think I know what you're talking about.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
Yeah, yeah, it's really cool. And if you go to
the the 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, a
line 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. Yeah, and I
(28:37):
saw it and I was like.
Speaker 3 (28:37):
Whoa, did you just die from nostalgia?
Speaker 1 (28:41):
Look might have teered up a little bit at the desk,
but they have, you know, the the gussied up corvettes
with the big chrome engines coming out of the hood.
Speaker 3 (28:50):
And do they have the four to four to two.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
I don't know if they have the four forty two.
Speaker 3 (28:54):
But I'm very well, when your friend dies, but it's
in his will.
Speaker 1 (28:59):
I'll go straight to the muse. Yeah, I'm gonna go
to this thing though at some point I don't know,
on this next LA trip or not. But it's right
there near the labri of tarpets. I think, oh yeah,
so I want to go check it out.
Speaker 3 (29:09):
I've been there. Yeah, it's neat.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
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 even get a
three D printer to your prototype.
Speaker 3 (29:24):
That had to have helped them tremendously. Yeah, 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. Sure, and once they have the the prototype done,
they'll make them. They'll make a mold out of it
and then inject it with molten metal under tremendous pressure. Yeah,
(29:48):
and that's why it's called die cast. You create a
dye that you cast all of the ensuing ones from.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
Yeah, and I think they're made with less metal than
they used to be, but they they still have metal components, right.
Oh yeah, I haven't seen a new one in a while.
Speaker 3 (30:03):
I haven't either, but I'm almost positive they do. And
apparently they're still about like a dollar. Oh really Yeah.
I was on the Hot Wheels collector site today and
like they kept making reference to about a dollar. So
just what's called the mainline? Yeah, the ones that they
make on mass.
Speaker 1 (30:19):
The citation exactly.
Speaker 3 (30:21):
I'll bet if you've got your hands on that nineteen
eighty three citation it'd be worth a few books. You're right,
but they kept referring to the mainline stuff about a dollar.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
Well, they've just kept making their manufacturing cheaper and cheaper,
so they've maintained that cost. I guess. Yeah. So as
far as collecting goes, the most valuable and that is
not this crazy one made out of diamonds for the
fortieth anniversary, which we'll talk about in a minute, But
the most valuable regular hot wheel is the sixty eight
(30:53):
beach Bomb, which was a VW bus and hot pink
that had real surfboard stick it out of the back.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
Yeah. Originally they only released I think twenty five of
them like that. There were a couple of problems. It
was difficult to manufacture them with the surfboard sticking on
the back, even though it was more realistic sure, and
it also was terrible on like a loopy loop track, yeah,
because I guess the surfboards would either way them down
or it would get stuck. So they only made just
(31:22):
a few of these things. The beach Bomb that was
the highest selling the hogh Wheels ever, was a pink one.
They made even fewer of those because apparently a lot
of boys were like, oh, I'm not playing with some
pink van, even if it does have cool surfboards sticking
out of the back. So the thing sold for like,
I think seventy something seventy five thousand dollars in two thousand,
(31:45):
and it has since sold again in twenty eleven. I
saw in like LA magazine for like one hundred and
twenty five thousand.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
Yeah, it's a lot of money for a tiny little car.
Speaker 3 (31:55):
Yeah it is. And that's the highest one ever apparently
by a long shot too.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
Yeah. I mean I've seen others that were worth like
ten grand and stuff, Like I think one of those
four to forty two originals is like ten grand.
Speaker 3 (32:09):
Yeah, I guess like nineteen seventy mongoose or cobra are
worth about ten grand these days, and a lot of them,
just like with any collector's item, you'll see if there
was just a few of them made, obviously they're gonna
be worth a lot more if there was something that
where they adjusted the design, like for example, the python
(32:32):
was originally called the Cheetah. Yeah, and then they found
out that a real life executive with real life lawyers
at GM owned the name Cheetah, because apparently GM executives
just owned names for cars that could potentially be.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
Used like every anifast animal name.
Speaker 3 (32:47):
Right, exactly. Yeah, so they changed it to the python,
but that was after they'd started manufacturing the cheetah. So
there's some out there that say Cheetah stamped on the bottom,
and if you have one of those, it's for ten.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
Yeah, it's funny to think about. It's the same with
Star Wars, 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 because
the Boba FET's rocket really shot out before kids started
joking on them, right or catching on fire. Yeah, and
that's the one you want. Yeah, But like you said,
it's all about scarcity and supplying to man.
Speaker 3 (33:22):
Dude. This whole thing is reminded me of a really
great gallery I put together about hilarious knockoff toys.
Speaker 1 (33:29):
Oh that's a good one.
Speaker 3 (33:31):
Yeah, go to stuff youshould 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
trademark law. Maybe or something or else. They just fully
don't understand the toy and what it's a lure is,
(33:53):
so they just make it in this weird interpretation. It's
pretty hilarious stuff.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
Yeah, it's a good one. We'll post that again, okay.
And then I did mention the diamond studded one. I
always think these things are just ridiculous. But like to
take any like of the diamond studded bras it was worth,
you know, oh yeah, for million bucks. I just always
think it's kind of dumb. But they did make a
fortieth anniversary in edition in nineteen I'm sorry, in two
(34:19):
thousand and eight with twenty seven hundred little diamonds and
rubies for tail lights and black diamonds for the tires
and all that stuff. Eighteen care at white cold body.
But it's where the one hundred and forty or it costs
one hundred and forty thousand dollars to put together.
Speaker 3 (34:37):
I'm sure it's gaudy. It's a gaudy hot wheels. Yeah,
so the car's cool. It looks like Mad Max's car.
Speaker 1 (34:43):
Oh you get is that a picture of it?
Speaker 3 (34:45):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (34:45):
I don't think I saw that.
Speaker 3 (34:47):
Can you identify that car? Uh?
Speaker 1 (34:50):
What is that looks familiar? It does look familiar to
its sort of like a Dolorean, but I don't think
it is.
Speaker 3 (34:55):
I don't think so either.
Speaker 1 (34:57):
No, man, that new Mad Max looks good though.
Speaker 3 (35:00):
Are you making Mad Max?
Speaker 1 (35:01):
Well, there's a new reboot I guess is what they
call it these days?
Speaker 3 (35:06):
Cool? Who's in it?
Speaker 1 (35:08):
What's his face that played Bain So? Yeah, Tom, Tom?
What's no? But uh, it looks it's the same director,
Tom Hardy. Yeah, Tom Hardy. But it's the same director
from all the Mad Max series. So it's oh really yeah, yeah,
yeah wow, And it just looks it's the whole it's
(35:28):
supposed to be just like one long intense chase battle.
Speaker 3 (35:34):
Yeah, sounds a lot like a Mad Max movie.
Speaker 1 (35:37):
Yep, what you want?
Speaker 3 (35:37):
Have you ever seen Vanishing Point?
Speaker 1 (35:41):
I think so? What is that?
Speaker 3 (35:42):
It was? Like, Man, I can't remember the car, but
the car was basically the Star. It was on long
car chase from like I think Colorado to California.
Speaker 1 (35:53):
Yeah, I remember that.
Speaker 3 (35:54):
It's a good one from the seventies.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
Yeah, two lane Blacktops Challenger.
Speaker 3 (35:58):
It's another the car. Yeah, I haven't seen that one.
Speaker 1 (36:02):
Yeah, that's good. When that one weirdly had James Taylor
in it when he was young and like on drugs
and cool.
Speaker 3 (36:10):
Were they apologizing to France?
Speaker 1 (36:13):
I don't know what they deal was.
Speaker 3 (36:14):
Did you hear about that? No, so that whole Charlie
Hebdoh Solidarity March the US sent like, yeah, I think
the assistant that could be in charge of the USDA
or something like that. Yeah, So to apologize, John Carey
had James Taylor go to France to perform. You've got
a French shut up for the French government.
Speaker 1 (36:38):
Yeah, just talk about beer. I know, isn't it send
guns n' roses or something at least well not guns n'
roses from nineteen eighty eight.
Speaker 3 (36:50):
Any guns n' 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 nineteen eighty seven to
my hometown of Toledo, Ohio, which is where the first
ever hot Wheels Convention Collector's Convention was held. I really
(37:15):
wish I would have gone to that because I was
there at the time. What year was it, eighty seven?
Speaker 1 (37:20):
Oh? Yeah, yeah, I can't believe we sent James Tayler
still just like, yeah, I can't focus on anything.
Speaker 3 (37:26):
Well, if you want to know more about James Taylor,
hot wheels, or just about anything there is in the universe,
you can type it into the search bar at HowStuffWorks
dot com. And since I said search, bart's time for
listener mail.
Speaker 1 (37:40):
I'm gonna call this minimum wage argument not argument proposal.
Speaker 3 (37:45):
All right.
Speaker 1 (37:46):
Listened to How Homelessness Works from quite a few years ago,
and you guys commented that part of the problem was
a low minimum wage. In comparison the cost of renting
a two bedroom apartment, you'd have to work something like
eighty seven per hours eighty seven hours per week to
afford it, the implication we need to raise minimum wage.
After hearing this, a clear solution occurred to me. I
think disagreements on raising minimum wage as a result with
(38:08):
simple misunderstanding. 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. On
the don't raise it side, people believe minimum wage is
just a starting point for working, like for teenagers, at
their summer job or after school. This ide believes workers
(38:30):
should were never intended to 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 it's a nation that someone should be able
to raise a family rent a two bedroom apartment while
(38:51):
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.
Let's say it's twenty seven grand per year, then set
it at that rate. On the other hand, if we
as a nation decide that minimum wage is just a
starting point, not meant to support a family. It's intended
for people with no work history or experience and low
(39:13):
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 settle,
any argument about setting minimum wage at a living wage
would be mistaken because we all just decided that people
(39:36):
are not meant to live on minimum wage and certainly
not meant to support a family. That is from Joe
Prohaska in Reno, Nevada, and its interesting. I look forward
to seeing the rebuttal emails.
Speaker 3 (39:49):
Yeah, I love that kind of stuff. Yeah, it's a
great proposal. I mean, I think that is what it's
based on.
Speaker 1 (39:55):
Sure, but as far.
Speaker 3 (39:56):
As I know, the cost of living calculations are really
date Yeah, and take a lot of stuff into account
that doesn't really apply any longer.
Speaker 1 (40:04):
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 3 (40:14):
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. At
the very least you get everybody talking.
Speaker 1 (40:25):
Yeah, because should some teenager at his first job make
like fourteen bucks an hour?
Speaker 3 (40:28):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (40:29):
I don't know if that's sending the right message either.
Speaker 3 (40:31):
I don't know. I don't know we'll leave it up
to you guys, our dear listeners.
Speaker 1 (40:37):
When I started working, it was like three bucks an
hour or something. It was ridiculously low.
Speaker 3 (40:41):
That is ridiculously low. Yeah, if you want to let
us know how you feel about Joe's proposal, was it Joe?
Speaker 1 (40:50):
I believe it was Joe Reno, Joe Reno Joe.
Speaker 3 (40:54):
You can tweet to us at sysk podcast. You can
post it on Facebook dot com, slash Stuff you Should Know.
You can put it in an email. It's stuff podcast
at HowStuffWorks dot com, and just for kicks, you can
hang around our home on the web Stuff you Should
Know dot com.
Speaker 2 (41:14):
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
HowStuffWorks dot com.
Speaker 1 (41:25):
Hey, friends, just want to let you know our friends
at Squarespace have partnered with the dude Jeff Bridges and
a really cool thing called www dot Dreaming with Jeff
dot com. And this is something Jeff Bridges actually came
up with. It's a project where he has his friends
in various locations around LA with these cool relaxing sounds
and guided meditations and stories designed to lull you asleep.
(41:46):
It's really neat. And he's also the Face of No
Kid Hungry, which is a great charity group you should
look into. So check out ww dot Dreaming with Jeff
dot Com and see what the dude in squarespace has
going on.
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