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.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to you stuff you should know from house stuff
works dot com. Hey, welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
just Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and Jerry. You know, that
just sounded like like that's what happens. Like you're having
a nightmare and you mean wake you up in the

(00:21):
middle of night and he just goes, hey, welcome to
the podcast, and then she slaps you across the face.
Real heart. H it's true. Yea, that is what that sounded.
It sounded that's pretty accurate. I don't know what got
into me. You were just super charged about this topic.
That's terrible. Super charged. I'll get it. It's like a

(00:45):
super charged engine. And 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 pretty great. Yeah. I had a quite
a collection, and I don't know where they are today.
We're missing huh. Yeah. I don't know if they were

(01:06):
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 value you need to find them?
They could be apparently, as far as hot wheels collectors go,
it could be in mint condition all the way down
to beater condition. That was how they rank them. Yeah,
mine would be beaters because I played with them like crazy.

(01:27):
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 of stuff you could do with them. Yeah, and
we should thank the fifth grader who wrote this article too.

(01:48):
Sad face. I complained about that, autoued to Holly. I
was like, this article actually says sad face like as
a sentence. I know that issues. I'm glad you said something. Yeah,
what if it was a fifth grader? Your feelings are
all hurt. I think your feelings are hurt either way. Now,

(02:09):
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 too, do Gi Joe episode
Sometimes I had the older ones though, you probably had
huge ones. Yeah, yeah, now I had the real ones.
Oh yeah, I don't that's fighting words. Man. The ones

(02:32):
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 Joe. 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. I think you just said it.

(02:55):
All the 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 I used to do book reports
and you would have to have a visual aid. Yeah, um,

(03:15):
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
a football player. Yeah. I don't know why I did
Branko Harris, but um, I got my mom to make
me a little Pittsburgh Steelers uniform for my g I
Joe because he looked like Franco Harris. Nice. Yeah, that

(03:36):
was my visual aid. Do 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 would feel guilty. Uh So, Chuck,
I have a question for you. Yes, did you know
that the number one vehicle manufacturer on the planet is,

(03:57):
in fact hot wheels? I did it? Kind of It's
astounding until you stop and think about it. Sure, Like
apparently since night 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,

(04:18):
and then you think, oh, yeah, 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, with
the hot wheels you can do that. Yeah, what's the

(04:40):
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 mnna have to challenge Lego
or maybe just look up how many times they manufacture

(05:01):
Old Kirk Christiansen is not going to be happy about this.
Who was that the founder of Lego? Remember that's right,
I thought you were saying old ye so um, let's
talk about the history of this stuff. Huh. So hot wheels,
like I said, have been around since n And anybody

(05:22):
who's heard the Barbie Trademark podcast will recognize the name
Elliott Handler. That's Ruth Handler, the inventor of Barbie trade marks.
Husband sure um and Elliott apparently saw a real chance
to muscle in on an already extent market by a

(05:43):
company called Tycho that had a line of miniature metal
cars die cast cars is what they're called, called Matchbox cars.
By the time hot Whales came around, Matchbox was already
there and had established a market, and Mattel said, let's
get in on it. Yeah, and The rumor is that
he saw his grandchildren playing with them and said, uh,

(06:06):
they kind of snake. I can make these better cooler,
and he had a um. As the story goes at
a designer which we'll talk about in a second called
Harry Bradley, and he had a hot rod and Elliott
was in the parking lot one day. It said, man,
those are some hot wheels. You got there? And and
apparently if you go look look at the old original

(06:27):
commercials for hot wheels, did they say that that's how well,
that's how they pronounce it hot wheels to the hot wheels. Yeah,
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,

(06:50):
but that makes more sense in the context of a sentence,
it does, you know, having been raised right, you know
post the in fact wheels hot wheel 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,

(07:11):
oh boy, we can sure waste some time, we sure can.
But the first in 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

(07:32):
Hot Wheels 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 nineteen so, and
Harry Bradley designed them all including apparently he got his

(07:54):
hands on UM. 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. 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

(08:16):
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 and releasing the corvette. Yeah sixty nine, Um, thank you,

(08:36):
that's all right. Thee as the lower 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 committed industrial espionage. Um. So, like

(08:57):
you said, the those were the two of the first
sixteen and that original lineup, that original collection, which if
you have any of those, okay, yeah, you got some
money because I mean like they went all out on those,
that original line Like there were bushings to the suspension

(09:18):
and the I mean 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 those to 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

(09:40):
first couple of years, like they were 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 was far

(10:00):
more functional, um than the match boxes were. 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, and the head to head race,
as we saw on the internet a guy did that

(10:21):
of course. Uh. He took a two volkswagons and two
Outi eights I think in one match box and 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 is 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

(10:44):
we said that all hot wheels are built at one scale. Yeah,
that's a big point, but not necessarily all matchbot cars.
They kind of vary here and there. 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 until nineteen seventy and they sadly a lot of

(11:07):
that had to do with the fact that they moved
them from Hawthorne, California 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. Not only that,
it's the spectro flame pain is pretty expensive. It's awesome,
it looks great, but it's pretty expensive. So um with

(11:30):
with any collector's item. As they started to downgrade the
components and the parts and the manufacturing and ultimately the
final product, all that did was make the original stuff
all the more valuable today because much fewer and fewer
of them as the years go on, proportionately speaking. Yeah,
they had actual axles, like you know, it was like

(11:51):
a real They were designed by car designers. Uh, and
they were made apparently to reach two hundred scale miles
per hour. Yeah, that's pretty cool. That's way cool. Yeah. Remember,
like in the cockroach episode, we talked about how they're
the fastest animal on the planet relatively speaking. Pretty neat stuff.
Um so chuck right out of the gate. Mattel had

(12:12):
a hit on his hands. Um. They released them in
nineteen sixty eight. 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, you're
speed Buggy, Speed Buggy. Yeah, remember speed Buggy. Yeah. It
was like a dune buggy that could talk, and it

(12:35):
was basically wonder bug No, it's speed Buggy. Um, because
there was like if you took Shaggy and put some
like gracing goggles on him and then turned Scooby Doo
into a speed a dune buggy, that's speed Buggy. Yeah.
He went around solving mysteries and stuff like that. Yeah,
wonderbug was I think that was live action. Oh, this

(12:56):
was a cartoon, said Marty Cross. This is actually like
Scooby Doo by the people who did Scooby Doo, using
the same people who did the voices for Scooby Doo.
It's just vaguely changed the characters. Hot Wheels was virtually
the same thing, except it was about racing clubs. They
were the bad guys and good guys. And do you
know this cruise? What is the nineteen seventies of the

(13:17):
doom Buggie was 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 hugos, no, no wonder bugs.
You know I like gremlins, do you uh? They're okay
for me. The kouded Gras of car design is the

(13:41):
AMC Pacer. Yeah, it's like the for Mica Kitchen of cars.
It's beautiful in all the weirdest ways. So much window.
That would be my sodd 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. I'd be happy with that one. Now

(14:01):
do they have that? That's a hot wheel? Oh? Yeah, okay?
Because 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

(14:21):
raises a pretty good point. Hot wheels has always been
about the racing design, like they've designed them to look
like racing cars, because they've also manufactured them to actually
be able to win a race, like we talked about
with Matchbox. Yeah. And one of the differences, uh, that
is one of the main differences between the matchbox and
the hot wheel is they were just much more interested

(14:42):
in being sportier, like you could get you could get
a matchbox like a delivery truck, right, you know, they
had they had, 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, we'll talk

(15:04):
more about all of this jam right after this. You

(15:27):
want to go ahead and talk about some of the
other differences between Matchbox and hot Wheel. 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

(15:48):
for two thousand fifteen. So 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 that 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,

(16:09):
access to an exclusive line of Skittles cars or something
like that that 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,

(16:30):
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 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,

(16:54):
but it's just awful a little bit. Like, So what
they do to make a Hot Wheels paceable is they
expand the wheel well a little more. Yeah, they break
it out a little bit, which is why the wheel
stick out some on 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

(17:15):
long as it's real. Uh. The um one of the
my favorite ones, and I 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 inexplicable.
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,

(17:36):
I had that thing, but it was it wasn't a
Nazi helmet per se, but it was that shape of
the helmet. Uh, Like the U. S soldiers have 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,

(17:57):
you know, because it's a better design for war and
it also had a black iron cross on the side
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 looked like the biker gang

(18:19):
would wear like those helmet with the iron cross. Yeah.
And all of it was Southern California hot rod culture
because what gave rise to Hot Wheels, So it makes sense. Yeah,
I don't I don't think there was any like 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 or um,

(18:43):
the second release, they had I think twenty two new
cars 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 nineteen seventy,
so they did sixteen, twenty four and then thirty three
in all of them came in like different colors, right, So,
like I said, if you had one that didn't mean

(19:04):
you had them all. You wanted to collect them all.
So kids were going crazy for it. And another way
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

(19:26):
over the top, was in nineteen eighty three when kids
who were lucky enough to be taken to McDonald's for
dinner and to get at which is what they called
them at the time, uh or could get one of
fourteen hot wheels in three and they had some cool once.

(19:46):
They had a Chevy Citation. Yeah, they had one that
was one of my favorite. Actually it was a Toyota
Mini Trek, which is a like 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

(20:08):
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 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

(20:29):
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 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 dripped off
and you really want to go back and get one

(20:50):
of the hot rods. It's my eyes are wide open,
my friends. Well, that's why our friends down under in
Australia have like outlawed marketing directly to children, which I
think is a fantastic move. 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

(21:15):
enough to 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. Trafic keep. Yeah, what do they
make a law. Yeah, really, Yeah, it's a big, very
progressive law country should have adopt. Um. Well, in nineteen

(21:39):
eighty three, I agree wholeheartedly. By the way, in is
when that Happy Meal thing happened. And also the same
year they moved from Hong Kong to Malaysia. Um and
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 disappointed Happy Meal toys

(22:00):
you can possibly get. Yeah, because it reminded you of
your dad who drove a citation right, who was always mad.
Oh dear so chuckers. After not a lot happened, how
Wills just kept going on, expanding more and more and more. Um.

(22:23):
I think they had another Happy Meals joint in ninety
one or something like that. Um and Uh, they said,
we need to we need to do something big, and
they did. They released something called Treasure Hunt series, which
was a purposefully limited release car series of cars. Um.

(22:45):
I think they did 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 two. Yeah,
the thing is neat do At my church had a
four or forty two and it was just awesome. Man.

(23:05):
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, no, 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 center

(23:27):
of his life. It's his baby. I mean, he's had
that thing since like nine six and just it's juiced
up and he's just scared 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 and he would get like four sets to tires

(23:47):
a year. 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 for two as close as you got and
then so that was treasure hunt thing kind of went. Um,

(24:09):
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

(24:30):
was like, we know you're out there and we're going
to design these just for you, 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
in when um, Mattel bought Tycho and hence Hot Wheels
bought Matchbox. So they're all on environmental at this point. Yes,

(24:51):
all right, we'll get to the design and collecting right
after this. So back then, if you wanted to do

(25:16):
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,

(25:38):
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 something like the legendary
Hot Wheels designers. That's the Mount Rushmore of hot wheels
pretty much. Yeah, um and yeah. They would just literally

(26:02):
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 come

(26:24):
to life. Right, whereas Matchbox only I believe has uh
bread trucks, 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, because some people are matchbox kids and some

(26:46):
kids are Hot Wheels kids. I had both. That ink
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.
There were probably gifts or stocking stuffers or something. I
don't think I like sought it out. I was always

(27:06):
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 a
lot of Tonka stuff. Um. One of my favorite Hot

(27:29):
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 above
the truck. I think, I know what you're talking about. Yeah. Yeah,

(27:51):
it's really cool. And if you go to them the
Peterson Automotive Museum in l A. 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 saw

(28:12):
it and I was like, whoa, you just die from nostalgia. Look.
Might have cheered up a little bit at 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 but it's in his will, I'll go straight to

(28:35):
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
Labraa tarpets. I think, oh yeah, so I want to
go check it out. 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 even get a three D

(28:58):
printer to maybe to your PROD type. 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 of it and then inject

(29:20):
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 they're made with less metal than they used to be. Um,
but they still have metal components, right. I haven't seen
a new one in a while. I haven't either, but
I'm almost positive they do. And apparently they're still about

(29:43):
like a dollar. 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 mainline
the ones that they make on mass exactly. UM. I'll
bet if you got your hands on that citation be
worth a few bucks. But they kept referring to the
mainline stuff. So as about a dollar, well, they just

(30:06):
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 made out of diamonds for the anniversary, which we'll
talk about in a minute, But the most valuable regular
hot wheel is the UH sixty eight beach Bomb, which

(30:30):
was a VW bus and hot pink that had UM
real surfboards sticking out of the back of it. Yeah. Originally,
UM they only released I think twenty five of them
like that. There are a couple of problems. It was
difficult to manufacture them with 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

(30:52):
I guess the surfboards that either way I'm down there,
it would get stuck. So they only made just a
few of these things. The each Bomb that was the
highest selling, um the hot Wheels ever was a pink
one that made even 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

(31:13):
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 eleven. I
saw in like l a magazine for like a hundred
and twenty five thousand. It's a lot of money for
a tiny little car. Yeah, and that's the highest one
ever apparently, Um by a long shot too. Yeah. Um,

(31:37):
I mean I've seen others that were worth like ten
grand and stuff, Like I think one of those two
originals is like ten grands. Yeah, I guess like nineteen
seventy mongoose or cobra are worth about ten grand these days. Um,
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,

(31:59):
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
apparently GM executive just owned names for cars that could

(32:19):
potentially be used like every an 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 cheetah uh stamped on
the bottom, and if you have one of those, it's
support ten grant. Yeah, it's funny to think about. It's
the same with Star Wars, like sometimes the mistake ones

(32:41):
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 on fire, and
that's the one you want. But like you said, it's
all about scarcity and supply to man, dude, this whole
thing has reminded me of um, a really great gallery

(33:01):
I put together about hilarious knockoff toys. Yeah. I 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 trademark law maybe

(33:23):
or something or else. They just fully don't understand the
toy and what it's a lureus, so they just make
it in this weird interpretation. 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

(33:43):
to take any like the diamond studded bras was worth
you know, yeah, forgotten Bucks. I just always think it's
kind of done. But they did make at anniversary in
edition in nineteen I'm sorry, in two thousand and eight
with little diamonds and bees for tail lights and uh
black diamonds for the tires and all that stuff. Eighteen

(34:05):
here at white gold body. But um, that's where a
hundred and forty cost a hundred and forty thou dollars
to put together. I'm sure it's gaudy. It's a gaudy
hot wheels, the cars cool. It 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?

(34:26):
What is that? Looks familiar? It does look familiar to
sort of 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

(34:46):
h Bain? Um? Tom? But 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,
and it just looks just the whole it's supposed to
be just like one long, intense chase battle. It sounds

(35:11):
a lot like a Mad Max movie. You want. Have
you ever seen Vanishing Point? I think? So? 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 seventies. Yeah,

(35:32):
two lane Blacktops. That's another. Yeah, I haven't seen that one. Yeah,
that's good. When that 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 Solidarity March, the US sent like

(35:57):
I think the assistant be in charge of the s
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 for the French government. Yeah, just
talk about I know. Isn't it send guns and roses

(36:19):
or something? At least well, not send guns and roses
from nineteen I had any 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

(36:41):
to my hometown of Toledo, Ohio, which is where the
first ever hot Wheels Convention Collector's Convention was held. I
really wish I would have gone to that because I
was there at the time. What your wash? I can't
believe we've sent James Tayler. I'm still just like I
can't focus on anything. Well, if you want to know

(37:03):
more about James Taylor, hot wheels, or just about 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.
Listen to how Homelessness Works from quite a few years ago,

(37:24):
and you guys commented that part of the problem was
at 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, 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 the simple misunderstanding.

(37:46):
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

(38:06):
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 betroom apartment while earning

(38:27):
a wage minimum wage, let's just figure out but that
would cost and set the 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

(38:48):
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 the settled,
any argument about setting minimum wage at a living wage
would be mistaken because we all just decided that people

(39:11):
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 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. But as far as I know,

(39:33):
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 stay like this is what we're trying to achieve,

(39:55):
or this is not what we're trying to achieve, at
the very least, to get everybody talking. Yeah, because should
some teenager at this 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 was ridiculously low. That is ridiculously low.

(40:19):
If you want to let us know how you feel
about Joe's proposal, was it Joe? I believe it was Joe.
You know Joe? Uh. You can tweet to us at
s Y s K podcast. You can post it on
Facebook dot com, slash stuff you Should Know. You can
put it in an email at stuff podcast, at how
stuff works dot com, and just for kicks, you can

(40:41):
hang around our home on the web Stuff you Should
Know dot com for more on this and thousands of
other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com