Selects: How Hot Wheels Work

w Chuck Bryant, Jerry. You know. That just sounded like, what like, that's what happens. Like you're having a nightmare and you me wakes you up in the middle of the night, and he just goes, hey, welcome to the podcast, and then she slaps you across the face. Real part m. It's true. That is with its own bod. It sounded that's pretty accurate. I don't know what got into me. You were just super charged about this topic. That's terrible. Super charged. I'll get it. It's like a super charged engine.

I didn't even think about that. Oh good, that makes me feel a little better. Yeah. Um, you know Jerry by the way before when I told her what we were doing, so, oh my gosh, that was my favorite toy when I was a kid. Nice hot wheels are pretty great. Yeah. I had a quite a collection, and I don't know where they are today. They're missing, huh. Yeah, I don't know if they were thrown out or if if my brother has them, or they're my mom's attic or what, because I'm kind of curious about have any

valuable you need to find them? Yeah, they could be apparently, as far as hot wheels collectors go, it could be in mint condition all the way down to beater condition. I was high they rank them. Yeah, mine would be beaters because I played with them like crazy. That's good. I mean, that's what they're for, you know. And there's value for a beater too, like some people apparently harvest them for parts to rebuild like a you know, a new Frankenstein model. Yeah, that's pretty neat. There's a lot

of stuff you can do with them. Yeah, and we should thank the fifth grader who wrote this article too. Sad face. I complained about that out loud to Holly. I was like, this article actually says sad face, like as a sentence, Yeah, I know that issues. I'm glad you said something. Yeah what if it was a fifth grader? Your feelings are all hurt. I think your feelings are hurt either way. Now, sad face. So we're talking about

hot wheels today. I had a couple. Um, my favorite toy was g I Joe, but I appreciated Hot Wheels Joe too. Do g I Joe episode? Sometimes I had the older ones, though you probably had huge ones. Yeah yeah, now I had the real ones. Ye oh yeah, I don't that's fight words. Man. The ones that I had were so awesome. They were like there was a huge, fast collection of all of them. There was like cobra.

Cobra didn't exist when you were collecting g I Joes. No, but how could you say, like, oh, that one that's ten inches tall and has real clothes and fuzzy hair and the kung fu grip is inferior to this little plastic thing. I think you just said it. All fuzzy hair says it right there. I don't really mean that, Chuck. I I don't have a dog in that fight. Like, if you like the big g I Joes that's cool. I got a problem. Yeah, it's a quick side note.

I have to tell this story when you know how I used to do book reports and you would have to have a visual aid. Yeah. Um, I might have told this before. If I do, I apologize, I don't recognize it. Um. I did a report on Franco Harris went in a lunchary school because he was the football player. Yeah. I don't know why I did Frankul Harris, But um, I got my mom to make me a little Pittsburgh Steelers uniform for my g I Joe because he looked like Franco Harris. Nice. Yeah, that was my visual lady,

you still have it, No, of course not. We have the G I Joe's. But I think the Steelers uniform is gone. Bye bye. That's said. Yeah, you know, I'm sure your mom put a lot of work into that. Now it feels guilty. Uh So, Chuck, I have a question for you. Did you know that the number one vehicle manufacturer on the planet is, in fact hot wheels? I did it. Kind of It's astounding until you stop

and think about it. Sure like, apparently, since when hot wheels were first introduced, more than four billion hot wheels have been produced. That's more than the big four Detroit automakers combined. You're like wow, and then you think, oh yeah, it costs a minute fraction of the cost to build a hot wheels and it does a normal car. Plus. Also, it's not like you're gonna go, I want this uh bewick cutless supreme in every color it comes in, right,

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

be happy about this. Who was that the founder of Lego? Remember? Oh oh yeah, that's right. I thought you were saying old. Yeah. So, um, let's talk about the history of this stuff. Huh. So hot wheels, like I said, have been around since nine and anybody who's heard the Barbie Trademark podcast will recognize the name Elliott Handler. That's Ruth Handler, the inventor of

Barbie trade marks. Husband Um and Elliott apparently saw a real chance to muscle in on an already extant market by a company called Tycho that had a line of miniature metal cars die cast cars is what they're called, called Matchbox cars. That's right. By the time hot wheels came around, Matchbox was already there and had established a market. And Mattel said, let's get in on that. Yeah. And the rumor is that he saw his grandchildren playing with

them and said, uh, they kind of stink. I could make these better, cooler, And he had a um, as the story goes, had a designer which we'll talk about in the second called Harry Bradley, and he had a hot rod and Elliott was in the parking lot when Dan said, man, those are some hot wheels you got there. And and apparently if you go look look at the old original commercials for hot wheels, did they say that that's how well, that's how they pronounce it wheels hot wheels. Yeah,

the emphasis is on the hot. It sounds awkward. They're like, race your hot wheels. You can make you can race them. Just go buy some hot wheels. That's what they That's how they say it, collect all your hot wheels. Yeah, but that makes more sense in the context of a sentence. It does having been raised right, you know, post the fast wheels, hot wheels, because wheels. Now I'm trying to picture the guy in the parking lot saying, those are some hot wheels you got on your there? You'd say

hot wheels you got there? You know? Yeah, Oh boy, we can sure waste some time, we sure can. But the first is, like you said, when the first line came out of sixteen Hot Wheels, they were sold initially for fifty nine cent apiece. Yeah, And like you said, the guy whose car originally inspired the name Hot Wheels UM was Harry Bradley, and he was the designer of that first sixteen cars. They were also called UM. California

Customs Miniatures. Was that first original sixteen group of Hot Wheels UM that were released in nine so and Harry Bradley designed them all, including apparently he got his hands on the first one, by the way that came out was a Chevy Camarose. The second one that came out was the Chevy Corvette, and apparently the Chevy Corvette came out before the actual Corvette came out. Yeah, the sixty nine Corvette. That is so Harry Bradley was an old hand and not just miniature car design, but car design

in general. He was an old GM designer and I guess he had connections still at GM and probably under the table in a possibly illegal way, got his hands on the blueprints for the Corvette that hadn't been released yet, and hot Wheels beat GM to the punch and re leasing the corvette. Yeah, sixty nine, Um, thank you, that's all right. The yeah, as the lord goes, he supposedly knew that the cafeteria door was unlocked, so he snuck

in through the cafeteria door. But that's called industrial espionage. Yeah, that sounds like a story like just lore. Okay, but

maybe so maybe he'd committed industrial espionage. Um. So, like you said, the those were the two of the first sixteen in that original lineup, that original collection, which if you have any of those, yeah, yeah, you got some money that you're sitting on, because I mean like they went all out on those that original line Like there are bushings to the suspension, Yeah, and the I mean the chassis. UM. It had suspension like shocks, like you could press them down and it would bounce back. I

had some of those. I don't think they were from sixty eight. But when did they quit making as set up until seventies seven was when they stopped making the UM. Oh no, seventy is when the suspension got an overhaul. Okay, so for the first couple of years, like, they were really putting a lot into these things. UM. The tires were red line racing slicks, UM and the things. The whole reason they went to so much trouble is because

they really wanted to destroy their competitor, matchbox. And one of the ways they did that was by making these things far more functional, um than the match boxes were. The matchbox cars were, so they really could race. And if you put a matchbox car up against the comparable hot wheels, say the same model car, um, the hot wheels will destroy it every time in the head to head race. As we saw on the internet. A guy

did that of course. Uh. He took a two volkswagons and two OUTI eights I think in one matchbox and one hot wheel and he said they won by at least a car link every time he tried. And this was no loop de loop rain things was just the straight race. Um. They painted them originally in Spectra Flame, which was very shiny and sparkly and expensive. Um. And I don't think we said that all hot wheels are built at one sixty scale. Yeah, that's a big point,

but not necessarily all match butt cars. They kind of vary here and there, right. Um. But like you said that Spectra Flame and the red line tires didn't only last until seventy seven, and the suspension only lasted till nineteen seventy and they sadly a lot of that had to do with the fact that they moved them from Hawthorne, California to Hong Kong. And like any product, you're like, hey, you can make it for half as much if you make it in China, so let's move, let's ship the

operations overseas well. Not only that, it's the Spectra flame pain is pretty expensive. It's awesome, it looks great, but it's pretty expensive. So um, with with any collector's item. As they started to downgrade the components, in the parts and the manufacturing and ultimately the final product, all that did was make the original stuff all the more valuable today because as much fewer and fewer of them as

the years go on, proportionately speaking. Yeah, they had actual axles, like you know, it was like a real They were designed by car designers. Uh. And they were made apparently to reach two hundred scale miles per hour. Yeah, that's pretty cool. That's way cool. You remember, like in the cockroach episode we talked about how they're the fastest animal on the planet relatively speaking. Pretty neat stuff. Um, so chuck right out of the gate. Mattel had a hit

on his hands. Um. They released him in nineteen sixty eight. By nineteen seventy, Hot Wheels was a Saturday morning cartoon in the vein of like Dune Buggy and Scooby Doo and all those guys. Hannah, Barbara dug you're speed Buggy, Speed Buggy. Yeah, remember speed Buggy. It was like a dune buggy that could talk, and it was basically wonder bug No, it's speed Buggy, um, because there was like if you took Shaggy and put some like racing goggles on him and then turned Scooby Doo into a speed

a doom buggy, that's speed Buggy. Was that a cartoon? Yeah, wing around solving mysteries and stuff like that. Yeah, Wonderbug was I think that was live action. This was a cartoon, said Marty Croft. This is exactly like Scooby Doo by the people who did Scooby Doo, using the same people who did the voices for Scooby Doos. It just vaguely changed the characters. Hot Wheels was virtually the same thing,

except it was about racing clubs. There were the bad guys and good guys and do you know this prus what is the nineteen seventies that the doom Buggie was a very popular thing, remember seeing those on the road, Like I used to see him all the time. Not all the time, but in the seventies it was a common thing. Yeah, you don't see him anymore, very rarely. No. No Gremlins, no u goos, No, no wonder bugs. You know I like gremlins, do you uh? They're okay for

me though. The koded Gras of car design is the AMC Pacer. Yeah, it's like the four Mica Kitchen of cars. It's beautiful in all the weirdest ways. That would be my soft after Hot Wheels if I had a hot Wheels that if I just could have one hot wheel, it would I don't know if that would be it, but I'd be happy with that one. Now do they have that that's a hot wheel? Oh yeah. And if you look up a mc gremlin hot wheels, they went

to town on those. They had some with like the the intakes, like sticking out of the hood and um, just all sorts of just awesome different variations like indiecr Gremlins and stuff like that. Because and that raises a pretty good point. Hot wheels has always been about the racing design, Like they've designed them to look like racing cars, but they've also manufactured to actually be able to win

a race, like we talked about with matchbox. Yeah, and one of the differences that is one of the main differences between the matchbox and the hot wheel is they were just much more interested in being sportier, like you could get you could get a matchbox like a delivery truck, right, you know, they had that, and but the match boxes looked more real. They all were about looking realistic and

not necessarily performance. Um, and hey, if you want a bread truck, you can get a bread truck, right exactly, but you can't get a bread truck hot wheel. You know. Uh, we'll talk more about all of this jam right after this. You want to go ahead and talk about some of the other differences between Matchbox and hot Wheel. Yes, since we're at it, um, Matchbox or I'm sorry, hot Wheel is the one that is more likely to have branded versions. Oh man. And do they ever like the Ghostbusters ectomobile

right um? Or even more than that, Like they have a deal with eminem Mars for two thousand fifteen, so they have like a TwixT trucks and a Skittles van and like all this stuff. They have licensing with d C and Marvel this year, Fast and the Furious. I know they had a line. So they're they're really big time into branded and a lot of times they'll have like a store will just have exclusives, access to an exclusive line of Skittles cars or something like that that

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

and bring that up. Okay, it looks weird. You can't just shrink it and have it's in the same proportion and have it look normal, right Like, it will be as far as like shrinking a car down by scale, it will be in the exact same proportion. But it's just awful a little bit. Like So what they do to make hot wheels race able is they expand the wheel well a little more. Yea, they break it out a little bit, which is why the wheel stick out some on a on a hot wheels, but not on

a matchbox. That's right, because match boxes are all about realism. To heck with how it looks, as long as it's real. Uh. The um one of the my favorite ones, and I had one of these that they mentioned this article was the red baron. The person who wrote this that it was an inexplicable and inexplicably cool helmet over the cockpit. UM. I don't know, but a explic couple. It was just

the roof of the car was a helmet. Um. But I looked it up again today and I was like, oh, yeah, I had that thing, but it was it wasn't a Nazi helmet per se, but it was that shape of the helmet. Uh, Like the U. S. Soldiers had that shape now, you know where it's cut lower around the ears instead of just a straight you know, like the World War two helmet. But the Nazis used those first,

you know, because it's a better design for war. And it also had a black iron cross on the side of it, well hence the red baron, right, Yeah, but it was It's easy now as an adulta look and say that looks like a little Nazi hot rod. Yeah, but the red baron was World War One. He was pre Nazi Germany. Yeah. And it was also I think at the time just like look like the biker gang would wear like those helmet with the iron cross. Yeah. And all of it was Southern California hot rod culture. Yeah,

what gave rise to hot wheels. So it makes sense. Yeah, I don't I don't think there was any like sartitious intent. Yeah. Um, so, like I said right out, of the gate. Hot Wheels was a hit. They had a cartoon within a year or so of the first sixteen being released. Um, the second release they had I think twenty two new cars thirty three total, and then um, the third year they they had another. They released thirty three after that, right oh no, yeah, I'm sorry, thirty three by nine seventy.

So they did sixteen, twenty four and then thirty three and all of them came in like different colors, right, So, like I said, if you had one, that didn't mean you had them all. You wanted to collect them all. So kids were going crazy for it. And another way that Mattel very wisely targeted children was to get in with fast food. Uh. In nineteen seventy the first hot Whales came out as a toy at Jack in the Boxes. Yeah.

The big one though, the one that like put them over the top, was in nineteen eighty three when kids who were lucky enough to be taken to McDonald's for dinner the happy Meal and to get a wheels what they called them at the time, uh or could get one of fourteen hot wheels in three and they had some cool ones. They had a Chevy citation, did they really? Yeah,

they had one that was one of my favorites. Actually it was a Toyota Mini Trek, which is a like a station wagon camper, and it even said painted on the side good time camper that you could get and you're happy meal, which if I could have one hot wheel, it would probably be that. You know what they were doing now that I look back through my adult eyes, like snorting pot. No, they were giving you a bunch of crappy ones because you wanted to keep coming back

to get the cool one. Yeah. Probably you're like, I got a citation, Like, can I go back because I want to get the hot rod. That's exactly what they were doing. Sure, man, I feel so like manipulated. What did you think they were doing with happy meals? Well, I mean, I know it's all manipulation to get you to try and own all of them, but they should have been all cool ones. But you can't do that because the regular kid might be like, no, I got

I got the cool one. I'm fine. But if you get this the citation, you feel jipped off and you really want to go back and get one of the hot rods. It's my eyes are wide open. My friends. Well that's why our friends down Under in Australia have like outlawed marketing directly to children, which I think is a fantastic Really. Yeah, that's so unfair to market directly to children. It's just almost literally is like taking candy

from a baby. Like kids aren't sophisticated enough to psychologically defend themselves from being like bombarded with by adults to say, go tell your parents to buy you this. You can't function correctly without this trapper keeper, so go get it the trappic keeper. Yeah, what did make a law? Yeah? Really yeah, it's a big, very progressive law which I think all countries should have adopt. Um. Well, in nineteen eighty three, I agree wholeheartedly. By the way, in is

when that happy Meal thing happened. And also the same year they moved from Hong Kong to Malaysia, um and it and it said that's when they added their economy cars, So that must have coincided with the citation. Yeah, the citation man one of the most disappointing Happy Meal toys you could possibly get. Yeah, because it reminded you of your dad who drove a citation right, who was always mad. Oh,

dear so u Chuckers. Yes, after not a lot happened, Hot Wills just kept going on, expanding more and more and more. Um. I think they had another Happy Meals joint in ninety one or something like that. Um and uh five, they said we need to we need to do something big and they did. They were at leased something called Treasure Hunt series, which was a purposefully limited release car series of cars. Um. I think they did uh twelve models at ten thousand each originally and and

hence the name Treasure Hunt. They were hard to find. Yeah, and one of the cooler ones for me, uh was the Oldsmobile for forty two. Yeah. The thing is, dude at my church had a four forty two and it was just awesome. Man. He was he had like the only muscle car in the youth group. And years, like two years ago, my brother I was talking about this dude,

Jason Singleton. I was like, whatever happened to him? He's like, oh, he still lives in the so and so and he went and you know what, dude, I went, No, he went, he still got it. Oh yeah, why would you get rid of it? He still he still has the car. Went to his Facebook page and it is like the center of his life. I'm sure it's his baby. I mean, he's had that thing since six and just it's juiced up and he's to scare the daylights out of me

and that thing. But it was also exhilarating, you know, to be riding with him and he you know, like two feet of drag. He would lay like power breaking and you would get like four sets of tires a year. He'd be in the passenger seat, going safe, be jeezy. Yeah, I was very scared because I was you know, I didn't flirt with the wild side back then. The Oldsmobile forty two is as close as you got. Was eating. And then so that Treasure Hunt thing kind of went um.

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 was like, we know you're out there, and we're going

to design these just for you. Yeah, and we'll talk more about collectors, um, but just to kind of button up the history of hot wheels, it all came full circle when um, Mattel bought Tycho and hence hot Wheels bought Matchbox. So they're all owned by Mintel at this point. Yes, all right, we'll get to the design and collecting right after this. So back then, if you wanted to do 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, And like like we said, Harry Bradley, who's the daddy of the hot wheels designs, Who's the guy who did the first sixteen Um, he was a GM designer originally in his footsteps followed Howard Reese and then after that

Larry would and they those are some of like the legendary hot wheels designers. That's the Mountain Rushmore of hot wheels pretty much. Yeah, um, and yeah, they would just literally go out and measure these things, and that was one way that Hot Wheels were born. Another way was that And this definitely differentiates Hot Wheels from Matchbox is that there are Hot Wheels that only exist in the

Hot Wheels world. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. They They are called the fantasy cars, like they're just the designers imagination come to life. Whereas Matchbox only I believe, has uh bred trucks exactly, well, they only have cars that are based on real cars, right right. Hot Wheels has a whole fantasy line. It's interesting that their own bites of the same company still and that they just have kept that distinction. You know. I guess some people are Matchbox

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

They were obviously much bigger, but those were like construction vehicles like dump trucks and stuff like that, and still today. Um that Volvo dump truck, the giant one, yeah, um with the huge wheels, I think is one of the coolest vehicles ever created. Yeah. I think I had one of those when I was a kid. I didn't have a lot of Tonka stuff. Um. One of my favorite hot wheels though, was the little red Express truck. I don't remember that if you saw it, you might it

might ring a bell. It was basically, uh, I can't remember what kind of truck it was. I think it was a Dodge, but it was just a cool red step side pickup truck and it had the two uh, the two vertical mufflers on each side that went up above the truck. I think I know what you're talking about. Yeah. Yeah,

it's really cool. And if you go to them the Peterson Automotive Museum in l A. They have a really cool exhibit there that I haven't been to in person, but I was looking at it, a line permanent exhibit where they have the real life versions of the hot wheel cars and they have a little red Express truck, a full size one. Yeah, and I saw it and I was like, whoa you just die from nostalgia. Look might have cheered up a little bit at this at

the desk. Um, but they have, you know, the gussied up corvettes with the big chrome engines coming out of the hood. And do they have the four or four two? Uh? I don't know if they have the four forty two. But I'm there when friend dies, but it's in his will, I'll go straight to the museum. I'm gonna go to this thing though at some point I don't know, in this next l a trip or not. But um, it's right there near the LaBrea tarpets. I think, oh, yeah,

so I want to go check it out. I've been there. Yeah, it's neat. It is neat. But back to the design. These days, you're not gonna need a tape measure and stuff like that. You're gonna photoshop designs and you're gonna even get a three D printer to maybe to your prototype. That had to have helped them tremendously, because you know, with if you're designing real life cars and you have a three D printer, that's pretty handy, but with hot wheels like you can print out pretty much exactly what

it's gonna look like. And once they have them the prototype done, they'll make them. They'll make a mold out of it and then inject it with molten metal under tremendous pressure. And that's why it's called die cast. You create a die that you cast all of the ensuing ones from. Yeah, and I think there may with less metal than they used to be. Um, but they still have metal components, right. Yeah, I haven't seen a new one in a while. I haven't either, but I'm almost

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

the mainline stuff. So as about a dollar, well, they've just kept making their manufacturing cheaper and cheaper, so they've maintained that cost, I guess. Uh. So as far as collecting goes, uh, the most valuable and that is not um, this crazy one they made out of diamonds for the anniversary which we'll talk about in a minute. But the most valuable regular hot wheel is the UH sixty eight beach Bomb, which was a VW bud us in hot pink that had UM real surfboard sticking out of the

back of it. Yeah. Originally, UM they only released I think twenty five of them like that. There were a couple of problems. It was difficult to manufacture them with the surfboards sticking on the back, even though it was more realistic, and it also um was terrible on like a loop de loop track because I guess the surfboards would either way I'm down or it would get stuck. So they only made just a few of these things. The beach Bomb that was the highest selling UM the

hot wheels ever, was a pink one. They made even fewer of those because apparently a lot of boys were like, I'm not playing with some pink van, even if it does have cool surfboards sticking out the back. So the things sold for like I think seventies something seventy five thousand dollars in two thousand and it is since sold again. In two thousand and eleven, I saw in like l a magazine for like a hundred and twenty five thousand. It's a lot of money for a tiny little car.

Yeah it is. And that's the highest one ever apparently, um by a long shot too. Yeah. Um. I mean I've seen others that were worth like ten grand and stuff, like I think one of those forty two originals is like ten grands. Yeah, I guess like nineteen seventy. Mongoose or cobra are worth about ten grand these days. Um. And a lot of them, just like with any collector's item, Um, you'll see if there was just a few of them made,

obviously they're going to be worth a lot more. Um. If there's something that where they adjusted the design, like for example, the Python was originally called the Cheetah, and then they found out that a real life executive with real life lawyers at GM owned the name cheetah because apparently GM executives just owned names for cars that could potentially be used like every ana fast animal name, right exactly. So they changed it to the the Python. But there

they that was after they'd started manufacturing the Cheetah. So there's some out there that say eda uh stamped on the bottom, And if you have one of those, it's support ten grand. Yeah, it's funny to think about. It's the same with Star Wars, Like sometimes the mistake ones are the ones that are super valuable because like there was some recall, but like, oh, but you want that one because the Boba Fett's rocket really shot out before kids started choking on them, right or catching on fire,

and that's the one you want. But like you said, it's all about scarcity and supply to man, dude, this whole thing has reminded me of um, a really great gallery I put together about hilarious knockoff toys that, yeah, go to stuff you should know dot com and look that up. It's pretty awesome. There's some really strange interpretations of beloved toys, including Star Wars toys that people who make counterfeit toys come up with to try to skirt

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

I just always think it's kind of dune. But they did make a fort anniversary in edition in nineteen I'm sorry, in two thousand and eight with hundred little diamonds and rubies for tail lights and uh black diamonds for the tires and all that stuff. Eighteen care at white gold body. But um, it's worth a hundred and forty or cost a hundred and forty thousand dollars to put together. But I'm sure gaudy. It's a gaudy hot wheels. Yeah, it's like cars. Cool looks like Mad Max's car? Oh you get?

Is that a picture of it? I don't think I saw that. Can you identify that car? Uh? What is that? Looks familiar? It does look familiar to me, sort of like a DeLorean, but I don't think it is. I don't think so either. No, man, that new Mad Max looks good though. Are they remaking Mad Max? Well, there's a new reboot I guess is what they call it these days? Cool? Um? What's his face? That played? Uh? Bain um Tom? But it looks it's the same director,

Tom Hardy. Yeah, Tom Hardy, but it's the same director from all of the Mad Max series. So it's oh really yeah yeah yeah, And it just looks just the whole it's supposed to be just like one long, intense chase battle. It sounds a lot like a Mad Max movie. You want. Have you ever seen Vanishing Point? Uh? I think? So? What is that? It was like, uh man, I can't remember the car, but the car was basically the Star. It was one long car chase from like I think, um,

Colorado to California. Yeah, I remember that. That's a good one from the IND's Yeah, two lane Blacktops. That's another classic. Yeah, I haven't seen that one. Yeah, that's good. When that one weirdly had James Taylor in it when he was young and like on drugs and cool? Were they apologizing to France? No, I don't know what the deal was. Did you hear about that? So that whole Charlie hebdough um like solidarity March, the U S sent like I think the assistant be in charge of the U s

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

One more thing about collecting. If you wanted to be the coolest collector of hot wheels on the planet, you would have to build a time machine and go back to to my hometown of Toledo, Ohio, which is where the first ever hot Wheels Convention Collector's Convention was held. I really wish I would have gone to that because I was there at the time. What your was it? Oh? Yeah, I can't believe we sent James Taylor. I'm still dislike, Yeah,

I can't focus on anything. Well, if you want to know more about James Taylor, hot wheels, or just about anything there is in the universe, you can type it into the search bar at how stuff works dot com. And since I said search parts, time for listener mail. I'm gonna call this um minimum wage argument, not argument proposal. Alright, listen to how homelessness works from quite a few years ago, and you guys commented that part of the problem was

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

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, we're never intended two and should not expect to be able to support a family that pays minimum wage. So

here's my solution. Since we're a democracy here, let's just decide what it is supposed to accomplish and then set it at the appropriate level to do that. If we decide as a nation that someone should be able to raise a family in a two betterom apartment while earning a wage minimum wage. Let's just figure out what that would cost and set wage there. Figure in rent, clothing, food, utilities, transportation, etcetera. Let's say it's twenty seven grand per year, then set

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

compensation by gaining skills and good work history. With a settled any argument about setting minimum wage at a living wage would be mistaken because we all just decided that people are not meant to live on minimum wage and certainly not meant to support a family. That is from Joe pro Haska in Reno, Nevada, and uh interesting, I look forward to seeing the rebuttal emails. I love that kind of stuff. Yeah, it's a great proposal. I mean so,

I think that is what it's based on. Sure, but as far as I know, the cost of living calculations are really out of date and take a lot of stuff into account that doesn't really apply any longer. Plus, regardless of what you think it should or should not be, the fact is adults with two kids are still going to be working these jobs. It's not just going to

be teenagers looking to advance. But it would be nice to put that issue to bed, to say like, this is what we're trying to achieve, or this is not what we're trying to achieve, at the very least, to get everybody talking. Yeah, because should some teenager at his first job make like fourteen bucks an hour? I don't know. I don't know if that's sending the right message either. I don't know. I don't know. We'll leave it up to you guys, our dear listeners. When I started working,

it was like three bucks an hour or something. It was ridiculously low. That is ridiculously low. Uh. If you want to let us know how you feel about Joe's proposal, was it Joe? I believe it was Joe Reno Joe. You can tweet to us at s y ESK podcast. You can post it on Facebook, dot com, slash stuff you should know. You can put it in an email at Stuff podcast at how Stuff Works dot com, and just for kicks, you can hang around our home on the web Stuff you Should Know dot Com. Stuff you

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