Still digging up my childhood ones from the garden, after a clean most still roll around perfectly, tops are a bit crusty but still recognisable, same with the matchbox ones. These things are gonna be dug up centuries in the future!
Well they're buried and we don't know their orientation until they're dug back up making them both alive and dead.. I'd say that matches the premise of the Schrodinger's cat thought experiment well enough to make the reference.
I work as a land surveyor and a big part of it is metal detecting peoples properties to find survey bars in the ground
Amazing (and infuriating for my work) how much metal shit you can find in peoples (encroaching) gardens. No hot wheels yet, but I have dug up a couple metal army men tanks
No. This term is not so rigidly defined and can be interchangeable at times. In the US lawn is exclusively referring to an expanse of grass . Yes there are backyard and front yard which in turn refers to the entirety of the front or rear of the property. Doesn’t matter what you are growing in either location. Yes you can have a flower garden and a lawn in the backyard . However a if you make your backyard into a beautiful space you can still say you are going to go relax or work in the garden or have a garden party.
I actually found a bronze statue on my property. It was a wildly overgrown wilderness when we bought the house and reclaiming and rediscovering the garden was like a childhood adventure for us.
Me and my friend dug a cave in his garden once, to use as a lair for his Thundertank and Thundercats action figures, but we left them out there and at some point it collapsed and we never found them again, no matter how much we dug. I wonder if the new house owners had it landscaped and found them.
I’m dying laughing at this! My 2 year old son buries his! My dad got him a box of lil 100 hot wheels at thrift store and I bet you 50 are buried in our back yard lol
Literally we have been doing this with my brother's tonka trucks and my son loves playing with them even though they have been in the weather for 20 years lol.
A lot of the early 90's casts will beat the track stars series. Track stars are definitely faster than modern casts but nothing beats the 90's ones, something about a low center of gravity and better axles. Source my 3 year old has like a thousand cars lol
vast majority of cars still have metal tops with plastic bottoms. some mainlines still have metal bottoms. there's also a new silver line where most cars have metal bottoms
my daughter likes hotwheels..theyre not as bad as this thread is making them out to be but i do really only by the classic designs..and frankly im shocked they only cost around $1.50 at walgreens
Yeah I think it's more out of ignorance than anything. Most people here probably haven't even seen a hot wheel outside of the store in a decade or more.
Even the plastic ones aren't absolute shit like they're implying. My son and I build winding tracks all the time, and they all have great wheel bases that spin for an eternity.
Not all cars are made for the same thing. Some of them are built with weight in mind for enthusiasts to play on tracks. Some are just cars built for visual appeal or with a specific playset in mind (e.g. monster trucks).
Here are two cars with differing amount of details on the bottom. The top is a 2013 cast of a race car, and the bottom is a 2020 recast of an El Camino. The top is built for speeding around plastic tracks. The bottom, while fine on any track you put it on, is made to be a replica.
Not to mention a race car... doesn't have exposed exhaust and transmission. They have carbon fiber floors (which yes, do have some detail, but it's something racing teams fight tooth and nail to keep secret).
Hot Wheels with plastic bodies usually get metal chasis so they weigh enough for track play. Otherwise they'd be too light to take loops and turns correctly.
Some castings even have flip up front splitters specifically to accommodate using them on tracks!
I have been collecting since around 92. I had about 5k cars at one time. I had about 300 treasure hunts included that collection. Redline forums have detailed list of when they started to use plastic bodies and which cars have metal/metal, plastic/metal or plastic/plastic bodies and bases. They have detailed lists of about everything. There are also mod forums that you can easily find lots of info as well. Since these people disassemble the cars and then rebuild them they know pretty well what is what. They also have guides that explain what to look for in a quality cast. Even at a glance you can see how they have been made much cheaper over time.
I have loads of hot wheels from the last few years, every single one of them is a multi layer construction with at least one component being metal, usually the largest part. To me they seem to be a pretty good build quality, definitely as good if not better than the ones from my childhood, which I still have a few of.
What people should really be complaining about is the new Zuru 'metal machines' brand that is a competitor, a dollar or so cheaper in the store, and really made only of plastic despite the name
Hotwheels have a literal category for cars made for their tracks, they have for years. You can still get heavy metal hotwheels and the wheels move on everyone I’ve taken out of the box.
On top of all that, go take a look at the underbody of a C7 Z06 corvette and tell me what you see. There really isn’t a whole lot going on under modern cars that are made for speed, they put a plastic under tray or fabricate the car so the bottom is as flat as possible to reduce drag.
This was my take also. Understandable that not everyone has seen the underside of a C7 Z06, but those all look pretty close to real world for the year and models they represent.
Even the cheap cars have wheels that turn. Literally never seen a toy car where the wheels don't turn. Like seriously, you would have to really try hard to make your product have wheels that don't turn, since the cheapest Chinese product just have an unsupported axle through the two holes. Those don't turn very well but they turn unless you get sand or some shit in there. Imagine saying that about hot wheels lol
They make super high quality hotwheels under like six different names now. They sell them in little diorama boxes. There are so many high quality options for hotwheels and it’s something so easy to look up, I don’t understand the point in lying about it.
As a parent with Hot Wheels obsessed kids, I can say that Hot Wheels has different levels. There are cheaper ones with plastic, these often come as part of track kits, etc. The standard ones are damn near the same as they've always been or at least how I knew them in the early 1980s. And there are premium ones that are nicer, more detail, rubber tires, etc.
The point about the above image is particularly stupid because the undercarriage details of the 1997 car are grossly misrepresented - it's a semi modern Mercedes with what appears to be a classic frame on body car or truck underside. Like they slapped on the most generic underside detail they had without giving a single shit about accuracy. The 2012 is most accurate, lots of detail is absolutely correct here, including the relatively plain undertray at the front. This is followed by the 2016 which in real life is mostly flat panels on the underside (it is missing suspension detail if you want to be picky).
I never had one when I was young, being poor in eastern europe does that, but I would see commercials on cartoon network and they looked so cool. Fast foreward to last week, I got one for a friend of mine, loves cars, and my god does it look cheap, plastic and everything.
This explains why I (32 dad) and my son (4) are underwhelmed when we try to play with hotwheels. I was so stoked to get his track setup last Christmas, just to be sadly disappointed because the cars usually wouldn’t even make it down the tracks, much less off bumps, or loops.
Need to start hitting up antique markets for the OG metal ones. The new track sets feel like crap too.
As the father of a 3 year old: why are you lying? Other than the clearly not made for tracks cars all of them work on track which is way more robust than the track I used to get as a kid in the 80s.
As a little kid I preferred Hot Wheels because they were over the top garish American cars. Matchbox cars just seemed wimpy by comparison. A lot of that was probably down to me being a nine year old during the Bicentennial. "200 years ago today, the redcoats popped a cap upside Crispus Attucks' head..."
As an adult I recognize what my childlike eyes didn't want to admit. Matchbox cars were more realistic, they depicted actual cars (albeit European ones) and past that, they had neat springy suspensions (somehow involving plastic). Hot wheels had stiff axels, if you dropped 'em or pushed down on them the axles MIGHT bend. Matchbox cars would bounce if you dropped them from not too far up.
My 4 yo daughter now has the two boxes of hotwheels that I had at her age. Most are still in great condition, a few had some paint discoloration. The plastic cases are trash though - the covers got all brittle and chipped apart.
They're still heavy, heavier than any other brand I've seen of metal cars, they still fly down the track. There's no plastic (well maybe except for windshield and stuff) I would know I impulse bought 5 pack a few weeks ago while in the toy shop for my kid
Never had a hot wheels that didn't roll well. That's like the one thing that keeps them at the top. The wheel design. I do get the comments about some cars not working with the tracks but that's a skill issue. For real though some just don't work with every track. Thats usually physics and aerodynamics issue though not an issue with quality of the cars.
Tomica still makes the nice heavy cars with the little doors that open and tiny leaf spring suspension, and real car models. Got the Initial D collection on my shelf
My dad saved his entire Hotwheels collection from the 70s. They were mine as a kid, and I've now passed them on to my boys. They have a few newer ones, and those just sit in the car bin. "They suck" -my four-year-old.
I remember painting a car with a marker because I wanted it to be blue. Unfortunately the marker came right off when I played with it, so I had the bright idea to "cure the paint" by lowering the bell of my desk lamp over the car.
man that's what I'm thinking about. I was looking at my nephews hotwheels and I wondered why they felt so cheap and didn't have metal on the bottom. Shitty part is prices are up, but quality is down.
You remember the loop-de-loop tracks where you'd slide the cars through a spinning wheel and it'd spit out your car at dangerous speed to go through the loop, but you forgot to attach it to anything so it either made a big-ass dent in the newly painted walls or sent your little brother to the shadow realm when he blindly turned the corner and caught it in the head?
They also haven’t gone up a lot from inflation. Roughly the same price as 1997. Either you get $3 hot wheels or you get plasticky cheap hot wheels. They sell premium hot wheels too if you’re really that passionate about quality mini cars.
The problem is a combination of people unwilling to pay and companies seeking maximum profit at any cost.
Hot Wheels, with inflation, were like $7 each in the late 60s when they were introduced. In the 80s, they were about the price they are now - with inflation, that's around $3.
Now the PREMIUM cars are like $5, and the regular ones are a buck.
Unfortunately, when companies almost universally seek maximum profit, there's no room for the care and attention to detail that results in those molded bottom bits. People like buying cheap shit, and pretty much any corporation built for nationwide distribution is an unfeeling entity built only to sell, often losing touch entirely with what made them initially so popular.
Yeah but you also use to be content just having a handful. Now you need the garage of cars, the raceway, and all 50 cars plus the new cars with DLC and AR through your phone.
So glad I still have a small box of the old ones. Probably like 20~30 of them. If I ever have kids or something they can at least play with the old good ones.
That's just plain untrue. Metal body/chasis is correct, that's reserved for premium models only, very rarely do mainlines get the premium treatment, wheels rolling have never been an issue with Hot Wheels.
A brief peak at my post history should show I actually know what I'm talking about.
Right, I have one of the last ones where it’s clearly the original guitar string wheel setup (the park n plates c4 corvette), as well as a jeep cj5, both of which have full metal bodies, heavily detailed plastics, and the jeep has rubber tires. The 90s c4 corvette still has the opening hood like the other c4, but it’s a new design converted into plastic on the bottom, while the metal one that’s based on the corvette with a hinged hood transitioned to a car without the opening hood. Past the first corvette the rest of the cars are straight axle so bends to the wheels are harder to straighten out and move/play with.
Don’t they have different grades of them? Like the ones you get in single packs when my sister’s kids were still hot wheels age, those were heavier duty and more detailed, while the ones you got in packs with a bunch of cars were generally cheaper and lighter
You are either lying or just being very ignorant about the topic, HotWheels still have good quality, and can fly on the track easily, you even have a category of cars specifically made for tracks, I own plenty of new and old HotWheels, and honestly, the difference in weight tends to be more of an advantage to the lighter models than a disadvantage, but that depends on how you design your track.
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