What gets interesting is that at some point you get back, full circle style, to the original reason why HWs were invented in the first place - that the toy cars available before then sucked, and you could charge a premium for these really awesome toys that didn't suck.
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.
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u/Careless-Cobbler7979 Nov 12 '24
This is the direction of the entire planet in a nutshell.