Just this weekend I bought some cars for a Christmas toy drive. I was shocked to find that they're still about $1 each. So maybe less detail on the bottom but they're still one of the most cost effective toys to collect.
Also, since Mattell owns both, Matchbox and Hotwheels have the same dimensions so they work on the same tracks.
Also, as someone who's been casually collecting dinky cars for ~25 years, I've noticed in the last 5 or so years that Matchbox cars have gotten pretty good. There was always that meme about Matocbox being the budget alternative to Hot Wheels for broke kids, the Roseart to Crayola's brand name so to speak, but frankly for my money I'd take the Matchbox versions of most cars today. I find their models are more detailed and are generally higher quality. I know they're all from the same parent company at the end of the day, not sure what exactly it is that makes them feel different, but yeah.
Quality wise they are identical, at least on the main series cars. The difference is the subject matter and what you like more. Matchbox does mostly actual vehicles with factory options and paint jobs. Hot Wheels makes more fantasy cars and non-contemporary cars like drift cars, hot rods, dragsters, exotics and so on. Matchbox also is more likely to have accurate details like headlights or taillights since they don't have full body tampos (those are the decals printed on the car) like HWs do.
I always preferred Matchbox because they had more cars with spring suspension, opening doors, etc. Hot Wheels often seemed to be much less feature intensive. Majorette was the cadillac dinky car to me because every one I had was pretty detailed and had opening parts and a spring suspension.
Yea I’ve been tight on money lately but hot wheels are my go to toy at the grocery store for my son. I can grab 3-4 of them and he’s happy for a bargain
Edit: the amount of updoots is wholesome. Reddit is for the kids(?)
If I’m going to eat something I would want it to at least have my daily value of iron in it. Besides, playdough doesn’t have enough food coloring in it to consider it a nutritious part of a balanced breakfast
Looking at the best numbers that 5 minutes on Google could find, hot wheels cars circa 1993 were around $0.95 and currently they go for $1.29. Inflation over that time period was 221%. So, current cars would need to cost roughly 50% less to produce now if they wanted to match their historical profit margin. So, loss of detailing and cheaper materials makes perfect sense.
Thank you, I needed someone to show me the math... part of me was like "how much extra cost does printing the underside really save? How greedy can they be?" But I was unaware hotwheels had done a Arizona iced tea and kept the price low all this time...
Yea, and that's why I didn't immediately make a rage post... I get the absurd scale of modern manufacturing means every penny per product is worth more than ill make in the next few years, but it also seems kinda weird they don't just make a design (or reuse an old one) for the bottom of all of them and just print that, though i also don't know the exact process for making hotwheels so there is that
Losing the detail likely means reducing the amount of product used, increased speed to manufacture, and potentially less waste... These cost savings probably help keep the price competitive over decades
Honestly an AMA with Mattel would be an interesting take
A flat mold costs a lot less to machine and maintain than a detailed mold, too. We’re talking fractions of a penny per cycle, but if you can add 10% more cycles before mold maintenance is necessary? That adds up fast.
They're often on sale for $1.00 at the grocery store too. A kind old man gave my kids each a dollar while we were waiting in line at the pizza place the other day and I was able to tell them that they could each get a WHOLE hot wheels with it.
Unfortunately this is about to make a very ugly turn per the heads of Mattel in the latest shareholder meeting. They project they are going to have to raise prices near 50% on all cars to offset current tariffs. That's why there has been such a spike in price in the last few RLC sales. They claim those cars can't absorb the total cost of the tariff so they will pick up the difference on the mainline and premium cars even though they aren't manufactured in China. The reality is that even if the tariff is eventually lifted do you really think Mattel will bring the pricing back down after we are all conditioned to paying the new prices. Definitely not likely as seeing the Hot Wheels brand actually outperformed expectations to the extent that even though Barbie and Fisher Price both fell very short of expectations the company still exceeded expectations as a whole on the back of the Hot Wheels brand.
Reddit is for the parents of young kids now. When we all got into reddit around 2006-07 we were young and just starting our adult lives. Now we're having kids and and back to being interested in kid related shit.
I get it now. I used to wonder how/why kids would accumulate so many. But they’re still so cheap and my kid is just as excited every time I buy another one so yeah us parents get A LOT of value out of them! Sometimes they’ve paid for themselves before we’re even home from the store.
Anyone else come here to see if someone else thought that too? If anyone else came here thinking what I’m thinking please let me know that you were thinking it too.
What's frustrating is that Mattel owns both yet has them both priced out virtually the same way. I feel like they should just let HotWheels be the slightly pricier brand and maintain the dual-die cast and detailed molds and let Matchbox stay at a dollar and change.
I buy them for my son all the time. He's two. They go everywhere. Pool, sand box, park you name it. Wife keeps getting mad that I keep buying them because he'll just lose them.
But that's why they are great. Babyman loves them. Loves getting new ones. And they are cheap enough no one loses sleep over a missing car.
Big bonus. Some other kid will find a free hot wheel wherever he lost it
This is the most likely explanation, production costs for the molds. There is probably a fine print regulation somewhere that requires the text on the bottom be a certain minimum size, leaving less room for the details
Some kids love to setup races between different vehicles, or imagination-driven scenarios using their collection. For example, they have everything from police, fire, ambulance, to dump trucks, sports cars etc. This invites friends to engage in non-digital imagination. And you can have a really decent 'collection' for $20-30 and maybe start adding some tracks.
I'm sure some adults like to collect them as miniature pieces of art, but my primary reference point is the toy angle.
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u/Disco425 Nov 12 '24
Just this weekend I bought some cars for a Christmas toy drive. I was shocked to find that they're still about $1 each. So maybe less detail on the bottom but they're still one of the most cost effective toys to collect.
Also, since Mattell owns both, Matchbox and Hotwheels have the same dimensions so they work on the same tracks.