(upbeat music)
- Every time I see a Hot Wheels car,
I get excited.
Even to this day,
I can't leave the grocery store without checking out
the stack of Hot Wheels at the end of the isle.
I think if you look around the Donut office,
it's clear, it's just a thing that all car people
are still into.
(percussion music)
Mattel introduced the brightly colored die-cast cars
in 1968, and since then,
they've become one of the most iconic toys
in the entire world,
with more than four billion cars produced.
How do they decide which cars get made?
And how did a failed guitar design lead to literally
the best selling toy in the world?
Well we're about to find out.
It's Hot Wheels time baby.
Despite their success with the Barbie doll,
the toy that Mattel's grandson loved the most
was a car that wasn't even made by their company.
By the time Elliot and Ruth Handler even considered making
a toy car in the mid '60s,
the market was already over saturated.
One of the biggest names they would have
to compete with was Matchbox.
The British toy car company had been around since 1953
and had a good foothold in the States
making 1/64th scaled cars like the Ford Zodiac,
the Vauxhall Cresta, and Variouz Volksvagenz.
Matchbox cars sold very well, and had many copycats,
like Corgi, who made really cool European cars,
like Aston Martins and Triumphs and Karmann Ghias.
If Mattel wanted to compete with cars like that,
their cars needed to stand out.
(smooth jazz music)
One way that they did that
was to paint their cars bright colors.
The other toy cars at the time were painted
more realistic colors, so flashy purples and pinks
would make those cars look drab in comparison.
Mattel hired real car designers, Chrysler, GM,
and other car companies to draw up their toy cars.
The designers made Hot Wheels cars wider and lower
than the other toy cars of the time,
and added sporty mag wheels, which contributed
to their hot rod look that further separated them
from the competition.
But one of the most significant innovations
was the wheels.
The wheels Mattel chose were fat and wide,
and made out of plastic.
Whereas Matchbox wheels were narrow,
and often made out of metal.
Matchbox also used bulky steel axles,
which combined with the narrow wheels,
made the cars roll slowly and wonky, like a shopping cart.
Mattel understood that kids are inherently chaotic,
and all they wanted out of a toy car was to make it go fast.
Not much changes when you get older, right?
(car revving)
Get the (beep) off, dude (laughs).
Well the plastic wheels meant less friction,
and thus more speed.
Designers added a slight tamper to the wheels
to make the cars drive straight,
which was where Matchbox cars fell short as well.
It was hard to race Matchbox because they would go
in different directions.
But one of the biggest factors that helped Hot Wheels
become better than the competitors
actually came from a failed innovation over at Mattel.
The company was experimenting in the early '60s,
attempting to design a guitar
that would never go out of tune.
The project was so expensive
that they ended up scrapping it.
With production now canceled,
they had to look for other ways to use this wire.
It turned out that the mandolin strings
made a much better axle than the steel ones
that they had been experimenting with.
The string was lighter and had smaller contact points,
which meant Hot Wheels rolled much faster
than cars with steel axles.
So, they were better.
But would the Hot Wheels sell?
The first batch of Hot Wheels was released
in May of 1968.
The Sweet 16, as they're called.
And they included many real, albeit tweaked cars
like the Camaro, Barracuda, Volkswagon Beetle,
and Cadillac El Dorado.
They also featured concept cars,
like the Dodge Deora Surf Van,
and fully custom cars cooked up by Hot Wheels.
When the cars debuted, marketing at Mattel
predicted five million cars would sell their first year.
When they brought Hot Wheels into a meeting
with a buyer from K-Mart and compared their cars
to Matchbox cars,
the Matchbox car flew wildly off the track,
while their car stayed put.
K-Mart ordered 50 million Hot Wheels on the spot.
This was a major success.
But to get people coming back and buying their cars,
they needed to design more cars.
So how do the designers come up with ideas for Hot Wheels?
Where do they even start?
(upbeat music)
Every Hot Wheels starts with a sketch,
it's been that way ever since 1968.
Hot Wheels gives their design team of 17 graphic
and automotive designers free reign to create
whatever they want.
The automotive designers create the body,
and the graphic designers figure out what to paint
and what to graphic.
That's a technical term.
The first part of the process is all done by hand,
so that ideas that come up during meetings
or brainstorm sessions can be integrated easily.
After a concept has been solidified,
a designer draws up the silhouettes, or buckets,
as they're called internally.
Even if a concept has nothing to do with the cars,
like a cat, they have to find a way to tie it
back in the car culture and make it look, in some way,
like it's a hot rod.
And that's how you get something the Purrfect Speed Car.
But all Hot Wheels cars are always part of a series,
so even the wild ones make sense in the context
of that series.
The Purrfect Speed Car is a part of the Street Beast series,
which is animals.
Once a Hot Wheels concept has been okayed,
it gets brought into 3D modeling software to be tweaked,
and then it's sent to the modeling shop,
where it's 3D printed, using 35 different resins.
Once assembled, the prototype is then put through
a bunch of different tests.
There are nine tests a Hot Wheels has to go through
to make it through production,
including various speed tests on the classic orange tracks,
and one test done, called the side slam launcher,
which tests vehicle stability.
The most important test is how much it hurts
when you step on it in the middle of the night.
Everything has to be perfect,
from the weight distribution to the clearance.
There's a minimum clearance guideline for Hot Wheels
to make sure no part of the car is gonna scrape
on a loop or any other track component Hot Wheels makes.
(metal bumping)
So I guess that means they won't be making low car
anytime soon.
If a car falls short on any of the tests,
it is brought back to the drawing board, so to speak,
and the design is tweaked 'til it passes all these tests.
The track is almost as iconic as the cars themselves,
and they've been around since the beginning.
They've seen a lot of updates through the years.
One notable upgrade being the Super Charger.
These battery powered modules can be put
in the middle of a long track section,
and use two spinning wheels to blast the car
back up to speed.
Once the tests are done, the prototype is sent
to the Hot Wheels plant in China,
where they figure out how to produce it.
It's broken down into four components,
the chassis, the interior, the body, and the windows.
Each component is made of different materials,
which is part of what makes Hot Wheels so cool,
it feels like it's a real model that's been put together,
not just a piece of plastic.
It takes anywhere from nine to 18 months
from initial conception to a Hot Wheels car
hitting the shelf, going straight into my grocery basket.
Making a completely original car that doesn't exist
in real life is one thing,
but how does the process differ when they make cars
that actually exist?
When you make a car that no one has ever seen before,
as a designer, you basically have no limits.
You can make it as cool or as goofy as you want to,
no one's gonna check you.
But when you work with established brands with iconic cars
that have a reputation to uphold,
well things are a little different.
You can't mess those cars up.
If you were just to shrink down a car to 1/64th its scale,
it would look off.
So the designers tweak little things here and there
to trick our brains into thinking
the proportions look right.
They make the wheels bigger and the body wider and flatter.
It's kinda like thumbnails on YouTube.
I bet a lot of you don't know,
but if you see a face on a thumbnail,
chances are the person's eyes and mouth have been enlarged.
It looks weird if you zoom in,
but when it's tiny, like on your phone screen,
it looks totally normal.
It's the same with Hot Wheels.
If you blew up a Hot Wheels car to the size of a normal car,
it would look really weird.
But for the same reason, it looks great when it's tiny.
That's what she said.
So the designers of cars like this sick E36 M3
had to scale the car down and accentuate the features,
while also making it look completely normal.
Even though the proportions are different.
That takes a skilled designer.
And that's a major way Hot Wheels differ from Matchbox cars,
which keep the same proportions when they're shrunk down.
When compared side-by-side
with a Matchbox car of the same model,
it's easier to see how different they are.
But nowadays, Matchbox is no longer the enemy.
Hot Wheels were so successful that Mattel was able to
buy out their competition.
In 1997, Mattel bought Matchbox from then owners Tyco Toys,
and now the company produces both cars.
(upbeat music)
So after 50 years, how does Hot Wheels continue
to stay relevant?
Especially as toy technologies continue to progress?
How do they compete with video games?
(upbeat music)
Well, they've been making their own Hot Wheels video games
for years now, I'm sure you've played them if you're my age.
Starting in 1985 with the release of Hot Wheels
on the Commodore 64, they were ahead of many other
car racing games by years.
Since then, they've made 14 different Hot Wheels
video games on countless different platforms.
There's that one Hot Wheels that had the Metallica song.
(singing Metallica)
(laughs)
When they're not makin' their own games,
Hot Wheels cars can be found in other racing games,
like Gran Turismo,
and more recently Forza Horizon, as downloadable content.
Video games aren't the only thing
keeping the company relevant, though.
Hot Wheels recently did a collab with rapper Travis Scott.
If you haven't seen the video for Gang Gang,
that sounded very white.
Our boys, Chris Forsberg and Dylan Hughes
are doin' donuts in it.
In the belle of the ball,
this 1988 E30 with a Cactus Jack livery.
It's a beautiful car and Hot Wheels immortalized it
by giving it a limited run of three cars to be given away
to some lucky fans, not gonna lie, I'm a little jealous.
Travis Scott isn't the only high profile collaboration
Hot Wheels has done though.
They made a custom BMW M1 with the Anti-Social Social Club.
A truck for Supreme.
And a collab with shoe company, Puma,
who used some classic Hot Wheels to release
custom colorways of their RSX shoe,
which sadly does not have anything to do
with the actor RSX.
Huge missed opportunity.
(upbeat music)
And if that wasn't enough
hashtag thicc boy stuff to collect,
Hot Wheels has a premium line of cars
that has details that normal cars don't have,
like big wings, license plates,
and more nuanced designs.
These things are super sick.
And they even have some moving parts,
like trunks or hoods that open.
Some premium lines from last year
included a Fast & Furious line,
the Car Culture line that has a few Gulf cars.
My favorite, the Silhouettes.
I've got an R31 and RWB Porsche, it's sick.
And the Entertainment line, with cars like the Batmobile
and a frickin' Star Wars van.
You know, the van from Star Wars.
In addition to mainstream collabs,
the company has announced a full length Hot Wheels movie,
question mark?
What?
Things have come full circle,
and now some Hot Wheels originals are being made
into full scale working cars.
There's a car that looks like Darth Vader's helmet.
Even the orange track got the full size treatment.
Hot Wheels had a tour where drivers would race,
do jumps, and even do a full size loop-de-loop.
Our friend, Tanner Foust smashed the world record
for jump distance in a Hot Wheels truck at the Indy 500.
332 feet.
You're crazy.
(upbeat music)
I think there's something really fun about the fact
that they make wild concept cars
that would never exist in the real world,
but also real cars that you see driving down the road.
Sure, these concept cars might look crazy.
But maybe there's one or two design elements on them
that will make it to a production car.
And maybe on a microscopic level,
these Hot Wheels drive innovation.
My girlfriend's like, "Why are you always
"in the Hot Wheels section?
"You're a 26-year-old man.
"Why do you keep buying Hot Wheels?"
I dunno, I love these freaking things.
What's your favorite Hot Wheels that you had
when you were a kid?
I think really my fourth or fifth birthday,
where it all started, was I got a pack of five cars.
Track that had, it was just a loop
and then a jump at the end.
You could clamp the very top of it onto a table or whatever.
Be kind, see you next time.