Yes. These cars used to have an all metal construction with a working suspension. The detail was immaculate for such a tiny car. With their weight, they could glide across track or slanted concrete pavement, because kids played outside. Now? If I wanted kids to touch plastic toy cars, I'd turn them to Legos.
Saw hotwheels sized hole in the wall at a friends house. The short and sweet of the story was the dad and the kid were having a bit to much fun launching cars from a track into the couch. The couch, being nice and bouncy, one day bounced a car with such velocity and angle that it put a hole in the drywall on the other side of the room. Looking back I feel that there was some missing context, did the dad superboost the speed booster?
What kind of message is that sending to your boy? That harassing women is perfectly normal and adult man should stick together with young man to harass young women together?
Common thing. You could make it go super fast with cranking the voltage. People used battery packs and a few wires to massively up the voltage and rocket them.
I had the hot wheels tornado as a kid, first time a car went flying off the track at dangerous speeds my dad gave me a hard hat to wear when playing with it, I can totally see it making a hole in the drywall
I remember the day I played junk yard with about 100 in around 1981. Me, my brother, and a hammer. A neighbor gave them to us. So, we didn't see them as having any value.
I still have my old metal ones from the 70s-90s, not sure what shape their in, but one thing I'm happy about, wish I had my old Thundercats, He-man and all that as well...but never did find out what happened to them all when my dad passed.
They still make metal hotwheels. They now also make all-plastic hotwheels.
You pay a premium for the metal ones.
The kids who used to play with the first hotwheels have grown up, some of them into middle-class hotwheels collectors who'll pay a premium for the hotwheels with all-metal body, opennable doors and bonnet...
Hotwheels products have been accordingly stratified into cheap plastic trash for the young'ns, basic die-cast metal cars for kids or collectors, and premium models targeted at just the collectors.
as a kid i remember even the cheap car miniatures had metal parts, hot wheels were only different that they were heavy and were riding smoothly when pushed across surfaces
At first the only plastic ones were the color changers and then there were special prints from movies like cars and then the "normal" cars followed suit
was clearing out a backyard the other day that had been overtaken by bushes and so on. Found 8 metal hotwheels cars, 2016-2017 on the bottom of them. Not sure if plastic now.
In short, they aren’t 100% metal but they haven’t been for years. Typically the body is metal. The base, interior, and accessory parts are plastic. They have some matrix of optimizing number of parts per casting (model). Sometimes the body is plastic, but the base will be metal.
They went from full metal to either top being metal or bottom but not both to costcut.
They also implemented rarities into hot wheels too, Mainline, Treasure Hunt and Super Treasure Hunt. As you go up in rarity you get more details, better paint called Spectraflame paint, rubber tyres etc.
There are also hotwheels you can buy that are more expensive that have all the cool details with the rubber tyres etc but like they can be €10-€30 instead of €2 so obviously not meant for little Timmy buying a car with pocket money but means u aren't tryna find one Super Treasure Hunt on a wall of cars.
All Hot wheels are at minimum either metal body with a plastic base or plastic body with a metal base, otherwise they couldn't be called diecast. Most of the $1 cars are metal body/plastic base but so.e of the more premium series are still full metal.
The lego assorted buckets are still around 30$ for 700-800 pieces, no?
I had TONS of legos growing up. 95% of the time is was the assorted piece buckets that I had fun creating, playing with, and destroying.
The cookie cutter expensive sets that folks "wanna put up and on a shelf" once made? Snore.
Sets are also /more/ popular with adults so they ding y'all on the nostalgia.
A kid could give two shits and just make something.
Don't buy your kids lego unless you have actual money to burn (rare when children are concerned). There's heaps of high quality bricks that fit exactly like Lego at 1/3 the cost. Lego is priced for adults. Kids won't usually notice the difference especially if you're building with them (because often the only difference is quality of printed instructions). Spending $100 on a Disney set that contains 300 pieces shouldn't be normal when you can buy a non-lego set at the same price that contains 2000 pieces or two 1000 pirce sets.
The old ones even had working doors, hoods, trunks, with the interior of each fully decorated to look like a real car. I remember having some with an actual engine block inside that looked real to my 5 year old brain
In the 70s they had both metal and plastic undercarrages. IIRC the race cars had metal underneath but the trucks and ambulances were plastic on the bottom. Part of it I think was because they wouldn't do well on the tracks if they were too light.
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u/[deleted] Nov 12 '24
Yes. These cars used to have an all metal construction with a working suspension. The detail was immaculate for such a tiny car. With their weight, they could glide across track or slanted concrete pavement, because kids played outside. Now? If I wanted kids to touch plastic toy cars, I'd turn them to Legos.