Speaker 1: Ridiculous Histories the production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to the
Speaker 1: show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much for
Speaker 1: tuning in. Let's hear it for the Man, the Myth,
Speaker 1: the Legend, Max two Computers, Williams. Let's hear it for
Speaker 1: the other miss men and Legends. We've got Noel Brown.
Speaker 1: I am Ben Bullen. Noel. This is one that's been
Speaker 1: a long time in our docket. We're talking about toy
Speaker 1: cars and did you ever have any of those like
Speaker 1: racetrack sets where they do the little loop de loop
Speaker 1: and so on.
Speaker 2: I had friends I think that had them, and I
Speaker 2: would you know, like I had a neighbor in my
Speaker 2: Neighborhoodhre I grew up whose parents were doctors, so they
Speaker 2: always had like the newest, coolest stuff, and they had
Speaker 2: like a whole upstairs that was just entirely this massive
Speaker 2: play room. So they had all that kind of stuff
Speaker 2: that I never really got. I was more of a
Speaker 2: he man Masters of the Universe and eventually Ninja Turtles
Speaker 2: kind of kid.
Speaker 3: Maybe so Joe's crept in there, Army crawled in there, but.
Speaker 1: Well, they had so many points of articulation. They were
Speaker 1: an excellent action figure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean superior to he Man. He Man was
Speaker 2: just like weird stiff arms that you could just.
Speaker 1: Kind of I think shoulders and hips could move.
Speaker 2: I think the hips could swivel because it would let
Speaker 2: you do like kind of like punches.
Speaker 1: You known my seat, He's like turning around with the
Speaker 1: sword like uh huh, you almost got me.
Speaker 2: Well, there was definitely a figure where his mid section
Speaker 2: was like spring loaded and you could hit a button.
Speaker 2: You could like cock it and then hit a button
Speaker 2: in the back like swing and that was like its
Speaker 2: special bower. There were tons of those. I had the
Speaker 2: he Man figures. I had some she Raw figures because
Speaker 2: my parents wanted me to not think that the he
Speaker 2: Man universe was just dudes. And I never understood why
Speaker 2: she was she raw instead of like she woman. It's
Speaker 2: a good question. I would have loved to be a
Speaker 2: fly on the wall in that pitch meeting. But it's
Speaker 2: just funny. That was also the time of like highly
Speaker 2: gendered toys. Oh now for like I mean practically blue
Speaker 2: is for boys, pink as for girls. Kind of thinking
Speaker 2: behind the marketing of these things.
Speaker 1: So Matchbox versus hot wheels, that is h This is
Speaker 1: probably going to be a two parter. Folks, we have
Speaker 1: a heck of a story to tell you. If you
Speaker 1: ever loved playing with those toy cars, or if you,
Speaker 1: like Nol grew up with someone who had the the
Speaker 1: whole racetrack setup. It's a lot like another version of
Speaker 1: model trains, which are pal Max's an expert on. You know,
Speaker 1: some some kids had these entire racetracks set about a room.
Speaker 1: You know, they've got the loop de loops, they got
Speaker 1: the wall.
Speaker 2: That's like the room I was describing they had was
Speaker 2: all just hardwood floor as far as I could see,
Speaker 2: and you could set up an entire universe of tracks
Speaker 2: in that place, and they all linked together, and you
Speaker 2: could add the little kind of junction points that were
Speaker 2: different things.
Speaker 3: It's a whole vibe.
Speaker 1: So our story starts today with two veterans of the
Speaker 1: British Naval Forces, Leslie Smith and Rodney Smith. They are
Speaker 1: not related they I know, I know, I know, clear, I.
Speaker 3: Mean, there were the probably a lot of Smiths in
Speaker 3: the Yukas. Still aren't Smith popular, you know what I mean?
Speaker 3: The lastmist last time's actually Smith.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I could tell by the way you move.
Speaker 3: No, I'm just kidding. I like that.
Speaker 2: That's very mysterious, not to speaking for you with Smyth,
Speaker 2: you know, because you've got your Patti Smith, and then
Speaker 2: you've got your Patty Smyth and never the twain shall
Speaker 2: meet Smith does have a y in it, but you
Speaker 2: know that's probably more the old English spelling. But the
Speaker 2: two of these fellas, Leslie and Rodney, they met during
Speaker 2: their time in World War Two, when they, like you said,
Speaker 2: were in the Royal Navy. After the war concluded, decided
Speaker 2: to start a company which they very cleverly sort of portmanteau.
Speaker 2: Their name favors one of them over the other a bit,
Speaker 2: but it was called Lesnie Products.
Speaker 1: Otherwise it would be rod Laie, Yeah right, rod Lee.
Speaker 2: Rod Less les Anyway, this is the folks who were
Speaker 2: walking through it.
Speaker 1: Leslie, first three letters of that, Rodney, last three letters
Speaker 1: of that, Lesnie.
Speaker 2: I guess I'm just saying that the les part is
Speaker 2: just a little more striking than the knee part. I
Speaker 2: actually had to do a retake because I initially just
Speaker 2: said it was named Leslie. When you look at it
Speaker 2: on paper, that favors that name. But they started this company.
Speaker 2: Whatever the providence of the name in Hackney, which is
Speaker 2: a burrow of London's of like Queens to New York
Speaker 2: and all of that. And it would specialize in fabricating, right,
Speaker 2: like die casting parts that could be used in various
Speaker 2: you know workmen like vehicular functions like agriculture or just cars.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they did a lot of stuff. It's interesting because
Speaker 1: if you study the evolution of most major automobile manufacturers,
Speaker 1: you see that they already typically have a background in
Speaker 1: manufacturing something like the people who make the bicycles say, hey,
Speaker 1: we know how to make tires. Let's do you know,
Speaker 1: let's do cars.
Speaker 3: How tough can it be? Machining or fabricating right? And
Speaker 3: it's also funny.
Speaker 2: We'll probably get to this in a bit, but a
Speaker 2: lot of companies that went on to become toy companies
Speaker 2: got their start and making parts for other stuff. Oh,
Speaker 2: it's all about having this setup, having the infrastructure, and
Speaker 2: then pivoting right.
Speaker 1: All praise due to nintend Do, which started I think
Speaker 1: manufacturing playing cards. So we want to give a big
Speaker 1: shout out to Matt Reigel over at grunge dot com
Speaker 1: with his work what happened to matchbox Cars? Before we
Speaker 1: get to that, we have to explain how Matchbox not
Speaker 1: Matchbook cars came to be. As we're saying, Lesnie Products
Speaker 1: is a machining interest, and they they do weird innovations
Speaker 1: that may not sound like a big deal now, Like
Speaker 1: they squish bread such that you can put it on
Speaker 1: a fish hook more easily, which I guess was a
Speaker 1: big deal.
Speaker 3: I guess that tiny divide.
Speaker 2: I don't understand this, Like gay, you just binch off
Speaker 2: a piece of bread and squish it and put it
Speaker 2: on the fish. What does this tiny device look like?
Speaker 2: I'm trying to We're so close to making lunchables, right.
Speaker 2: So this company, Lesnie Products, they rent out part of
Speaker 2: their facility to a guy named Jack O'Dell, an engineer.
Speaker 2: Eventually he joins the company. He started as a pop
Speaker 2: up and now he became part of the industry. Do
Speaker 2: you think it's neat though, that they had in these days?
Speaker 2: I guess there would be sometimes a little startup mentality,
Speaker 2: you know, to something because we've got all this stuff,
Speaker 2: we only need this much to meet to you know,
Speaker 2: meet our quota for our production. Let's rent out this part,
Speaker 2: you know too. I mean maybe this is like super
Speaker 2: common and I'm like romanticizing it. But it is kind
Speaker 2: of neat to think that like a company like this
Speaker 2: would ultimately end up being an incubator.
Speaker 1: You know, I think it's cool. Yeah, and that's a
Speaker 1: good word, incubator. Yeah. So soon after Lesnie is founded,
Speaker 1: they receive these orders, uh to machine parts for a
Speaker 1: small toy gun. They said, Okay, usually we're above it,
Speaker 1: but money is money. If we don't have a bunch
Speaker 1: of orders coming in from big industries, then we'll work
Speaker 1: on whatever kind of stuff we can get. We got
Speaker 1: to keep the lights on, We got to pay the
Speaker 1: people who work here. The pivot is coming right, The
Speaker 1: pivot is on the way, just like that guy who
Speaker 1: figured out chewing gum. So Lesnie looks into the toy
Speaker 1: market and in nineteen forty eight, that engineer we mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: Jack O'Dell, he designs Lesnie's first Lesnie made toy. It's
Speaker 1: an Avelen Barford road roller. It's a direct copy of
Speaker 1: a toy car. Oh uh, do you guys know what
Speaker 1: an Avelen Barford is.
Speaker 2: It's really but it's very barfee sounding. That's hard, that
Speaker 2: does not roll right off the time, but.
Speaker 1: It sounds like a specifically it sounds like a British
Speaker 1: euphemism for a specific type of fart.
Speaker 2: That's right, well, or it just it makes me think of,
Speaker 2: you know, having won too many pints at the pub
Speaker 2: and then you have to barford. But this does your
Speaker 2: right though, all that aside, it sounds like an intensely
Speaker 2: British vehicle.
Speaker 1: Yeah. They were an engineering company, so they made the
Speaker 1: kind of stuff you would see in road traffic construction,
Speaker 1: big trucks, basically the big orange yellow construction trucks. And
Speaker 1: this other toy manufacturer, Dinky Toy, was the leader in
Speaker 1: manufacturing toy cars at the time, and Lesnie, if we're
Speaker 1: being honest, kind of plagiarized them.
Speaker 2: And you know, I just occurred to me that this,
Speaker 2: I think is kind of a parallel story to the
Speaker 2: story we recently did on Japanese toys, and again kind
Speaker 2: of companies that were making things for the war effort
Speaker 2: pivoting to making copies of popular war vehicles and then
Speaker 2: you know, going on from there and using I believe
Speaker 2: tin cans and things like that that were left over
Speaker 2: from the war effort to make those.
Speaker 1: And they grow with great success. It's nineteen fifty one
Speaker 1: and one of the founders decides to leave the company.
Speaker 1: Maybe you're onto something nold because the knee of Lesnie
Speaker 1: Rodney Smith is the one who leaves. The Lesnie Corporation
Speaker 1: keeps the name. They continue with their work. Their next
Speaker 1: toy is the Coronation Coach, a mini tour model celebrating
Speaker 1: Queen Elizabeth's coronation as Queen of England in June of
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty three. That's so crazy because all of the
Speaker 1: three of us listening were just Americans while the queen
Speaker 1: was the Queen of England.
Speaker 3: She's always kind of been the queen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, It's just always there. He just always knew that
Speaker 1: one fact about that country, and now it's changed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I mean for even for us though, it
Speaker 2: never even occurred to me that there was like an event,
Speaker 2: just you know, since she was just always the queen.
Speaker 1: She was there since the island form.
Speaker 4: Precisely, I have to be completely honest. I don't know
Speaker 4: the name of the king, the guy who the coronation
Speaker 4: just happens.
Speaker 2: Charles is Charles, Okay, I was gonna say Philip famous
Speaker 2: Charles with the ears, you know, yeah.
Speaker 3: You know, but I'm sitting here like light right now
Speaker 3: doing it live, and I'm like, it's not Philip, that
Speaker 3: was her husband.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, it's not Harry.
Speaker 3: That's the one who's Carson Wentz in disguise.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well Knowle's right, it's Charles. He goes by snake
Speaker 1: bite with his friends. Obviously, Okay, cool, he's a tough customer.
Speaker 2: But you know it's crazy, Like think about like selling
Speaker 2: merch and an event like that. You know, you've ever
Speaker 2: been to a giant concert and there's like people selling
Speaker 2: like bootleg T shirts outside and stuff. I mean, there
Speaker 2: is money to be made around events like this. So
Speaker 2: Leslie essentially just totally keys into this exact thing and
Speaker 2: hits pay dirt by having the coronation coach like coming
Speaker 2: out in sync with this event. It's like feeding frenzy
Speaker 2: of an event. Just think about how crazy Americans go
Speaker 2: for royal stuff, you know, around either a coronation or
Speaker 2: a royal wedding or what have you.
Speaker 3: I mean, in the country. This is an absolute feeding frenzy.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it's a beautiful idea and they do a
Speaker 1: tremendous job with it. If we look at how these
Speaker 1: cars begin, then we're going to need to jump around
Speaker 1: a little bit hashtag no criss cross. That is an
Speaker 1: old school hip hop joke. All right, Fie missed the bus,
Speaker 1: Yeah right. And so the world's first mass market tiny
Speaker 1: toy cars date back to nineteen fifty two, which is
Speaker 1: kind of weird because we of course know that the
Speaker 1: automobile was around way before that. The idea for mass
Speaker 1: market tiny cars comes from exploiting a loophole. If you
Speaker 1: were a school kid back in the early nineteen fifties,
Speaker 1: you could only go to school with toys that were
Speaker 1: small enough to fit inside a matchbox. So LESNI keeping
Speaker 1: their eye on this, they say, hey, we already have
Speaker 1: economy of scale. We can make a car that can
Speaker 1: fit inside a match box.
Speaker 3: Oh totally.
Speaker 2: And they sold over a million of those Coronation coaches
Speaker 2: so they were rare and to go. So essentially, just
Speaker 2: like you know, I don't know if this is a
Speaker 2: national policy, Like it seems like the kind of thing
Speaker 2: that would be, you know, a specific principles idea, you know,
Speaker 2: things like in certain school districts where the length of
Speaker 2: a skirt is regulated. But I guess this whole matchbox
Speaker 2: thing was nationwide and they kind of like caught wind
Speaker 2: of it. And we're like, okay, dude, there's a super
Speaker 2: creepy story about it. So we introduced Jack O'Dell. Jack
Speaker 2: Odell the engineer who started working in a pop up
Speaker 2: at the space and then joined the company.
Speaker 1: Right. He has a daughter, and his daughter has a
Speaker 1: thing that she loves to do at school, and she
Speaker 1: gets in trouble for it. She takes the matchbox rule
Speaker 1: for toys and instead of bringing toys to school, she
Speaker 1: brings spiders to what.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she's an amazing is she like a Wednesday Adams
Speaker 2: type figure.
Speaker 1: I dream of that.
Speaker 3: She's wearing like black lace.
Speaker 2: Dresses like every Oh my goodness, this is the Gothis
Speaker 2: thing I've ever heard go on.
Speaker 1: So little goth Odell is bringing spiders to school. The
Speaker 1: school marm, we can imagine, does not love this, and
Speaker 1: so jack Odell, her father says, Okay, I'm gonna make
Speaker 1: you a little car, and he makes her a little
Speaker 1: a tiny replica of a steamroller like you would see
Speaker 1: on construction site right, paving roads. And the steamroller is
Speaker 1: made of brass, it's painted red and green, and his daughter,
Speaker 1: he likes it, and she shows it off to her friends,
Speaker 1: assuming she still had friends despite her clear track record
Speaker 1: of throwing spiders at children. She had some friends who
Speaker 1: I guess were happy that it was a steamroller instead
Speaker 1: of a spider. They were also impressed. And you know,
Speaker 1: if you can get a kid doing something that impresses
Speaker 1: other children, I have it, like.
Speaker 2: I have to have the thing, you know. That's how
Speaker 2: Pokemon works. I love though. There's this New York Times
Speaker 2: article by Douglas Martin, and there's an amazing kind of
Speaker 2: characterization of what Odell's thinking was behind this, that it
Speaker 2: was just right for a child's hand, but hard to swallow,
Speaker 2: no batteries, violence, free, quiet, and costing just pennies to make.
Speaker 2: These are all winners. These are all checking the box
Speaker 2: of capitalism right here, my friends. Yeah, hard to swallow,
Speaker 2: that's the most important.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's not like they cannot swallow it, but it's
Speaker 4: they would really, you know, yeah, it would exist.
Speaker 1: It's like water resistant or fire resistant. So in just
Speaker 1: the space of one year, the steamroller and various iterations
Speaker 1: of this vehicle are selling like hotcakes. Lesnie had set
Speaker 1: up a small factory inside an abandoned bar in London,
Speaker 1: inside an abandoned London pub called The Riflemen, and after
Speaker 1: they made the steamroller and that caught on, they made
Speaker 1: a land rover. Then they made one of those iconic
Speaker 1: London buses. They made a bulldozer, they made a fire truck.
Speaker 1: In nineteen fifty four, they already had made nineteen different vehicles,
Speaker 1: and their ninth teenth one was a MGTD roadster. This
Speaker 1: is considered the first match Box car, and they looked good.
Speaker 1: I'm so glad you brought up the earlier example of
Speaker 1: the Japanese toy manufacturing industry.
Speaker 2: It's really interesting how like the name of a legacy
Speaker 2: company that we just accept as having like always been
Speaker 2: around can spring from something so random, you know, like
Speaker 2: Matchbox cars. We think of that as you know, we
Speaker 2: see the logo with the like the racing stripe and
Speaker 2: the little kind of flaming out thing like that. It's
Speaker 2: like a ribbon, and you picture the tiny cars, and
Speaker 2: it just makes sense, you know, Oh, it's match Box
Speaker 2: like like it's small.
Speaker 3: I get it.
Speaker 2: But that kind of branding often isn't just like it
Speaker 2: comes from some weird occurrence, and I think.
Speaker 3: That this is a perfect example of that.
Speaker 1: Agreed. Agreed, I mean they were also pretty well made.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it comes from machining. I mean, these are
Speaker 2: made of metal. These things are like damn near indestructible.
Speaker 2: They're the bane of the existence of parents because if
Speaker 2: you step on one of those, like heel down, not
Speaker 2: only is it gonna hurt, but you might slip and
Speaker 2: fall down the stairs to your death.
Speaker 1: It's like a rolling lado. Yeah, so Odell, if we
Speaker 1: could talk about some of the production quality. Jack Odell
Speaker 1: has designed machines at this point entirely created to make
Speaker 1: these tiny toy cars. There's one machine. All it does
Speaker 1: it spray paints tiny silver headlights on the models. There's
Speaker 1: another one. All it does is bang out the mold
Speaker 1: for the interiors. There are dashboard dials. This stuff is
Speaker 1: like scale model accurate. Some cars have more than one
Speaker 1: hundred parts. We're talking tiny, tiny, like not just tiny
Speaker 1: tiny windshield fibers, but little you know, ceiling hooks where
Speaker 1: you would hang uh oh yeah, like uh hang out,
Speaker 1: hang some laundry.
Speaker 2: And of course all this got dumbed down over time,
Speaker 2: you know. But I mean, can you imagine exactly the
Speaker 2: precision of this one hundred It's like watchmaker like level
Speaker 2: kind of precision.
Speaker 1: To Philip Petique of uh of tiny car toys. I
Speaker 1: love it, man, I love it, and I can see
Speaker 1: Nola can crpl max here kind of maybe thinking about
Speaker 1: model trains, no fence backs. I'm just in your head
Speaker 1: a little bit. Well.
Speaker 2: And again not to jump too far ahead, but you know,
Speaker 2: obviously this level of quality uh isn't going to last forever.
Speaker 2: But then it becomes part of this kind of bespoke
Speaker 2: culture of like buying the perfectly you know, machined, exact
Speaker 2: replica of like this particular train engine or whatever.
Speaker 1: So this is still a European phenomenon at this point.
Speaker 1: Right until the very end of the nineteen fifties, there's
Speaker 1: an up and coming guy in the York is very
Speaker 1: madman in my head. His name's Fred Bonner, and he
Speaker 1: takes over sales of the Lesnie Corporation in the United States,
Speaker 1: and he says, I can sell them a car.
Speaker 2: I see a market here, yeah, And so it hits
Speaker 2: the American market around the end of the fifties, Like
Speaker 2: you said, around sixty two, Matchbox is knocking a million
Speaker 2: units out per week. And again, Douglas Martin, in this
Speaker 2: New York Times article we cited points out that's more
Speaker 2: than like real cars by a factor of a lot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and can you imagine the social dynamics there too.
Speaker 1: I think Odell in that nineteen sixty two period, which
Speaker 1: again quoted by the New York Times article, he said,
Speaker 1: we produce more Rolls Royces in a single day than
Speaker 1: the Rolls Royce company is made in its entire history. Okay,
Speaker 1: it's apples, the l apples orange. It's a good it's good.
Speaker 2: It's a good quote though, it's it's great, it's very
Speaker 2: it's very impressive.
Speaker 1: I hope he was talking with the person interviewing him,
Speaker 1: and I hope when he said that he picked up
Speaker 1: a little toy car and made room room and just
Speaker 1: sort of sailed it andross the table.
Speaker 3: And then the interviewer is like, what's your point, sir?
Speaker 1: Exactly?
Speaker 3: So I want to jump in here. No.
Speaker 4: I remember when we were doing the uh kind of
Speaker 4: like the parallel story about the Japanese car toy industry.
Speaker 4: You you talked like they I guess they made like
Speaker 4: a Lexus or something, and you're like, you know, there's
Speaker 4: some guys like, hey, baby, you want to go see
Speaker 4: my a Lexus?
Speaker 3: You know, somebody did with one of these Rolls Royces
Speaker 3: also like I got a Rolls Royce at home.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly at the time of the y. You know what,
Speaker 2: you never know, it could have still been impressive enough,
Speaker 2: you know, to seal the deal. It's like, because there
Speaker 2: weren't that many of these, These were kind of remarkable
Speaker 2: to behold.
Speaker 3: This was a new phenomenon.
Speaker 2: So like for someone to have this, they would have
Speaker 2: had the kind of the hottest thing on the market
Speaker 2: at the time.
Speaker 1: I mean, think of die Cast rocket and Space Shuttle
Speaker 1: models during the Space Race. It's the same thing. You know,
Speaker 1: you're a kid, dream big. So in nineteen sixty four,
Speaker 1: Lesnie contacts our boy Fred Brauner and he has this
Speaker 1: stack of matchbox cars that he's been selling, and they say, okay,
Speaker 1: we're going to buy those all back from you. Great
Speaker 1: job Fred. Also, we think you're cool. Do you want
Speaker 1: to work with us? Do you want to lead the
Speaker 1: US division of Lesnie products? And Fred says absolutely yes,
Speaker 1: And then they probably both take a little car and
Speaker 1: go in front of each other. And just to clarify
Speaker 1: we were talking about this off air when we say
Speaker 1: they bought stacks of matchbox cars back from Fred Brauner,
Speaker 1: he didn't have stock in the company. Remember these were
Speaker 1: not available in the United States.
Speaker 3: He just got a.
Speaker 1: Hold of a ton of them.
Speaker 2: He got a lot of products and yea product a
Speaker 2: commodity for them. Hey, so now we have a market here,
Speaker 2: let's have those back that you fulfills our agreement, and
Speaker 2: now we're gonna you know, move these units as it were.
Speaker 1: And so with that in mind, we're being as objective
Speaker 1: as possible. We are going to introduce you to the
Speaker 1: origins of hot wheels as well. There's a guy named
Speaker 1: Elliott Handler. He's one of the co founders of this
Speaker 1: huge company, Mattel.
Speaker 2: Again one of these legacy companies that just sort of
Speaker 2: starts early, gets to the market first, and then becomes
Speaker 2: so ubiquitous and associated with like everything big in the
Speaker 2: toy world, including Barbie. They have spun off Fisher Price
Speaker 2: at some point. They had connections with all of the
Speaker 2: biggest like movie studios and tie ins you could possibly imagine,
Speaker 2: and I think pretty much contind you with that level
Speaker 2: of you know, ownership of the marketplace to this day.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Mattel was a new kid on the block as well.
Speaker 1: They were founded in January of nineteen forty five out
Speaker 1: on the West coast, and they were super into they
Speaker 1: were super into multiple toy lines, so of course they
Speaker 1: would get their spider sense about this Elliott Handler. He's
Speaker 1: running Mattel, he's a co founder, and he says, we're
Speaker 1: going to make to your point about gender toys. He says,
Speaker 1: we're gonna make die cast toy cars for boys. And
Speaker 1: he says, we've got a huge market for small car
Speaker 1: models and it's dominated by these jokers across the Atlantic,
Speaker 1: these Matchbox people, and everybody else in the boardroom. To
Speaker 1: be clear, everybody else in the Mattel boardroom is saying, Elliott, buddy,
Speaker 1: we love you, you know we love you, but you're
Speaker 1: being a schmuck. This is never gonna work. And he said,
Speaker 1: believe me when I co founded Mattel. YadA, YadA, YadA.
Speaker 1: Whatever he said. It convinced them, and it turned out
Speaker 1: that Elliott Handler was right. The cars that Mattel created
Speaker 1: were a huge success. They came out strong in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty eight with sixteen different models. And maybe we talked
Speaker 1: about Handler. Maybe we talked about Elliott a little bit
Speaker 1: because he he had a bit of a personal grudge,
Speaker 1: I think because his grandson loved Matchbox cars.
Speaker 2: But like we were kind of hinting at earlier, Matchbox
Speaker 2: at this point already was starting to get this reputation,
Speaker 2: you know, rightfully so for being that kind of bespoke
Speaker 2: collector's kind of old world sensibility of craft. You know,
Speaker 2: like precision tooled German toys, you know that kind of stuff,
Speaker 2: Like they are very when you're mass marketing something, and
Speaker 2: especially when the United States are concerned, things like that
Speaker 2: tend to go out the window. It's more about like,
Speaker 2: how can we, you know, get rid of the human element,
Speaker 2: how can we make these things as reproducible on the
Speaker 2: largest scale possible, Because let's remember, I mean, when you
Speaker 2: know the Matchbox deal happened and we're talking about trading
Speaker 2: stacks of cars, we're talking about a relatively finite supply.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Matchbox is. Matchbox is the og, the original gangster here,
Speaker 1: and match Box is basing all of their stuff on
Speaker 1: vehicles that already exist. Right These are two scale reproductions
Speaker 1: of very important vehicles, singular cars, construction equipment, hot wheels.
Speaker 1: Goes a little off the rails. They say, we're gonna
Speaker 1: make these things that could be vehicles even if they
Speaker 1: don't exist, we're gonna make one. They get brighter colors,
Speaker 1: put stickers on everything. They do, fantasy designs that are
Speaker 1: kind of based on wild imaginings of hot rod culture.
Speaker 2: Of course, and why wouldn't you, you know, but it
Speaker 2: is really funny. It was just a difference in sort
Speaker 2: of thinking around you know, those early matchbook cars, And
Speaker 2: when we were talking about that, I was thinking, man
Speaker 2: and a hot wheels car what I was used to,
Speaker 2: and I was a kid that would be a sticker,
Speaker 2: that wouldn't be like a machine tooled little engraving or
Speaker 2: like an actual piece of thing that had to be made.
Speaker 2: Hot wheels kind of essentially, like we said, sort of
Speaker 2: dumbed down the idea, figured out how to make it
Speaker 2: much more scalable, and also, you know, broke the box
Speaker 2: of kind of creativity. It's like, how do we just
Speaker 2: make this whatever we want.
Speaker 3: It to be?
Speaker 2: And that's pretty attractive for a mass market for kids
Speaker 2: who aren't necessarily interested in like a perfect Rolls Royce replica.
Speaker 3: But Noel, they were cool. They're so cool.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, okay, Nerd Okay, you guys are both cool.
Speaker 1: You're both very cool. Uh, Benjamin, thank you Maxigaman. So
Speaker 1: the thing is by saving costs, this is around the
Speaker 1: time plastic is a big deal right in manufacturing. By
Speaker 1: saving cost Hot Wheels also made a toy that was
Speaker 1: more fun arguably, and it all goes back to the
Speaker 1: tiny replicas of wheels. They used wider wheels manufactured of
Speaker 1: plastic versus the narrow metal wheels of the old school matchbox.
Speaker 1: This means that if you buy a Hot Wheels car,
Speaker 1: it's a kid's idea of a hot rod car. And
Speaker 1: those plastic wheels right allow it to roll pretty freely,
Speaker 1: pretty quickly. Because plastic weighs less, there's less friction, it
Speaker 1: picks up more speed. Also, they purposely design the wheel
Speaker 1: with what's called a tamper, which allow like it makes
Speaker 1: an angle such that a toy car, if you just
Speaker 1: throw it roll it across a floor, it can glide
Speaker 1: in clean straight lines. And Mattel just kept all respect
Speaker 1: to you, guys, Mattel. Mattel just kept kind of failing
Speaker 1: their way to the top of the toy car game.
Speaker 2: No, and that's the thing, Like it sounds like we're
Speaker 2: nagging on the idea of like making something more accessible,
Speaker 2: and like sure, if you're someone who really appreciates collectors' items,
Speaker 2: and you know, the kinds of craftsmanship that goes into
Speaker 2: stuff that's its own thing. But to make something that
Speaker 2: like kind of capitalizes on the zeitgeist and like figured out,
Speaker 2: like what do kids really want?
Speaker 3: There's something impressive about that, even if it is kind
Speaker 3: of like evil.
Speaker 2: Corporate, you know, marketing kind of stuff. I gotta give
Speaker 2: them props. They figured out how to make a car
Speaker 2: that truly did go zoom zoom, and then they started
Speaker 2: to kind of go from there, and then they could
Speaker 2: introduce all of these accessories and all of these other
Speaker 2: things and all of these tie ins because they could
Speaker 2: make their car whatever they wanted it to be.
Speaker 1: And speaking and failing up, like I was saying earlier,
Speaker 1: Mattel had a bunch of stuff in the workshop, you know,
Speaker 1: things that never really got to the public, or maybe
Speaker 1: even didn't get past drawing board phase. Earlier, pre late
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties, Mattel had thought about creating a guitar, and
Speaker 1: the whole purpose of their mission with their guitar project
Speaker 1: was to make a guitar that never went out of tune.
Speaker 1: They lost a ton of money on this.
Speaker 3: It's so funny.
Speaker 1: It never came out. It never came out.
Speaker 2: As a musician, like you know who always like how
Speaker 2: would you? And also who cares? Just tune it, make
Speaker 2: a tuner instead of you're designing the wrong thing, Mattel,
Speaker 2: like it's never gonna happen, and like it's just again,
Speaker 2: how would you? How you made you and the weird
Speaker 2: thing to glom onto and like make your whole like crusade.
Speaker 3: I'm just thinking, it's like how bad would those strings sound?
Speaker 4: Like all your points is like completely correct, like that
Speaker 4: just that's just not gonna happen.
Speaker 3: But let's play this.
Speaker 4: You know, one in a billion they actually pulled this off,
Speaker 4: they'll probably be like the crappiest sounding strings. Very yes,
Speaker 4: it sounds like a project made by somebody who's.
Speaker 2: Not who doesn't understand music or any like just doesn't
Speaker 2: get it, you know, Like.
Speaker 1: Yes, it's it's big producer energy. It's big executive producer energy. Right,
Speaker 1: Someone's like, well, I love the ventures, but I hate
Speaker 1: having to keep tuning my guitar.
Speaker 3: And everything, big director energy.
Speaker 1: There we go. So here's the thing. Mattel absolutely craps
Speaker 1: the bed on this. The guitar never comes out and
Speaker 1: they get far enough into this ideation process that they've
Speaker 1: made a ton of this magical mystery guitar string wire
Speaker 1: and they don't have anything to do with it. So
Speaker 1: they decide, Hey, we're going to use these wires as
Speaker 1: the axles for our hot wheels, and that makes them
Speaker 1: lighter than the matchbox toys, and it also allows the cars,
Speaker 1: the toy cars to go much faster because there's less
Speaker 1: weight involved. They've failed upwards yet again.
Speaker 3: Ben, I know the answer for you. Max. Did you
Speaker 3: ever do the Pinewood Derby? Oh? Yeah, absolutely, it did
Speaker 3: a four or five years I think. Yeah. Did you
Speaker 3: elementary school?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah. I didn't stick around after elementary school though I didn't.
Speaker 3: I knew boy Scouts. I didn't Cub scouts you were
Speaker 3: too cool.
Speaker 2: Well, but I believe you made it all through the
Speaker 2: ranks of we below boy Scout, Cup Scout, et cetera,
Speaker 2: and whatever order that happens. I didn't make a past
Speaker 2: Cub Scout, but I did have the privilege of competing
Speaker 2: in the Pinewood Derby. And for those that don't know,
Speaker 2: it's you know, a race down a you know, a
Speaker 2: standardized kind of hill track with this like car kit
Speaker 2: that you make, and I just remember and want to
Speaker 2: get y'all's opinion. Was it cheating to put coins on
Speaker 2: the bottom.
Speaker 1: It was cheating. It is cheating. Yeah, to weight the
Speaker 1: front of the vehicle is cheating.
Speaker 2: So the way you get speed is by whittling it
Speaker 2: in a certain way or like carving it down making
Speaker 2: it as aerodynamic as possible.
Speaker 1: Yes, the ethical way to cheat with the distribution of
Speaker 1: weight would it would all depend on the type of
Speaker 1: wood that you use to create the vehicle. I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: the ethical way to cheat, the ethical way to Jeez
Speaker 1: derby fair enough? Okay, well, but again that's all kind
Speaker 1: of as a result of this type of energy, you know,
Speaker 1: like the idea of let's make a small thing that
Speaker 1: we can make go really fast and then we can
Speaker 1: like have you know, kids like racing each other. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so imagine you are a department store of the time, right,
Speaker 1: You're a Sears, Roebuck or whatever. In this case, Kmart,
Speaker 1: which used to be a fairly like popular department store.
Speaker 1: I guess I don't know how many are around today,
Speaker 1: but Kmart decide Oh, Max says there are three. Max
Speaker 1: is nodding, okay, oh right, you're gonna stay on mute.
Speaker 1: There are not many kmarts. They are an endangered corporate
Speaker 1: species at the very least. But back in the day,
Speaker 1: Kmart was one of the big US distributors that choose
Speaker 1: between the p seeing coke of Matchbox versus Hot Wheels.
Speaker 1: They chose Hot Wheels, and they did it because they
Speaker 1: watched versions of both toys on a plastic track and
Speaker 1: they said, Wow, the Hot Wheels car performs better than
Speaker 1: the Matchbox car. That thing just kind of does and
Speaker 1: then yeah, and then steers the wrong way, et cetera.
Speaker 1: And after this meeting, actually before they leave the meeting,
Speaker 1: they have a handshake deal that says Mattel will sell
Speaker 1: fifty million Hot Wheels cars to Kmart.
Speaker 3: Also, I want to jump in here. I actually went
Speaker 3: and looked it up.
Speaker 4: There twenty Kmart retail stores last the United States, four
Speaker 4: of which are in the US Virgin Islands. Twenty percent
Speaker 4: of the k Marts in America are in the US
Speaker 4: virgini Isles.
Speaker 1: Let's do the sound, cue the phone backs and peacefull
Speaker 1: in log it's just for you right now with.
Speaker 3: The fat which one is that?
Speaker 1: Back to the backs?
Speaker 2: Of course, I thought you met like corporate mouthfeasans we
Speaker 2: need a sound cue for that as well, And I'm sorry,
Speaker 2: I just want to backtrack to my Pinewood Derby aside.
Speaker 3: One second.
Speaker 2: Nineteen fifty three was when that first race took place,
Speaker 2: so that would have been parallel to kind of what
Speaker 2: was going on with.
Speaker 1: It's in the zeitgeist exactly. Can you imagine being a
Speaker 1: kid in the nineteen fifties or nineteen sixties and you say,
Speaker 1: I've been so good, all I want for my birthday
Speaker 1: is a matchbox or a Hot Wheels car, and your
Speaker 1: parents say, we got you a pocket knife, here's a stick.
Speaker 1: Do your best. Yeah, take that with you to school
Speaker 1: on a show until day.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Honestly, you'd probably be better off with the pocket
Speaker 2: knife because you could learn to fend yourself.
Speaker 3: And they can do all sorts of the impending apocalypse.
Speaker 2: But you know, messbox cars and hot wheels were fun,
Speaker 2: and we're into now like nineteen sixty eight. I think
Speaker 2: they made sixteen different releases, right.
Speaker 1: Mm hmmm. Yeah. The first hot wheels car to hit
Speaker 1: the market was the custom Camaro. And then if you
Speaker 1: are a collector of hot wheels vehicles or toys, I
Speaker 1: should say then you know those first sixteen releases as
Speaker 1: the quote unquote Sweet sixteen. They are identified by the
Speaker 1: red stripe on the tires. There were also you know,
Speaker 1: various accoutrement in paraphernalia that came out tracks, different sets.
Speaker 1: You could you know, you could like race them around
Speaker 1: and so on. They became a massive success to your
Speaker 1: earlier point, Noel, and this success, the gravity of it,
Speaker 1: it wasn't all trumpets and angel farts for everybody. There
Speaker 1: was one guy who worked at Mattel named Harry Bentley Bradley,
Speaker 1: who came from the actual car industry, and he said, okay, Mattel,
Speaker 1: good game, good game. I'm going back to work on
Speaker 1: actual cars. And when the company asked him to rejoin
Speaker 1: Mattel and they said, hey, we've got something really special
Speaker 1: going on with these hot wheels, he said, not me,
Speaker 1: but I know a guy. Here's my friend, Ira Guilford.
Speaker 1: He can help you design hot wheels cars.
Speaker 2: Because he had just left Chrysler, an actual facts auto manufacturer,
Speaker 2: and he shout out Laura and vogelahm Baker him at
Speaker 2: the top of the Chrysler building. What do you mean
Speaker 2: actual facts, Oh, actual facts? Sorry, I thought it was
Speaker 2: anti reference. I don't know why I think of a
Speaker 2: musical theater when in the conversation no reason whatsoever. We
Speaker 2: love you, Lauren, But yeah, I mean this. The guy
Speaker 2: understands design in the first place, so I would think
Speaker 2: maybe though coming from Chrysler, he might be more of
Speaker 2: that kind of matchbox mind of like you know, making
Speaker 2: like you know, replicas of actual cars, or he might
Speaker 2: have that more philosophy in mind. But you know, if
Speaker 2: you pay someone the right amount of money, they can
Speaker 2: like pivot as well.
Speaker 1: M sure. Yeah, and the the aesthetics apply equally, as
Speaker 1: I would argue, right. So, so our buddy Ira takes
Speaker 1: the job of designing the next generation of Hot Wheels models.
Speaker 1: Some of the coolest cars that Hot Wheels comes out with,
Speaker 1: at least according to collectors, are from Ira Guilford's mind.
Speaker 1: He makes the twin Mill, he makes the Splitten image.
Speaker 3: He's great names.
Speaker 1: They are great names, right, and they're gathering Mattella's gathering
Speaker 1: a cadre of designers, right. And the more familiar you
Speaker 1: are with the world of actual automotive design, the more
Speaker 1: important your input becomes. And it's kind of an alluring
Speaker 1: thing too. If you are coming from the world of
Speaker 1: automobile design. Now you just make whatever you think looks cool.
Speaker 1: You don't have to worry about engine performance the way
Speaker 1: you don't have to worry about intake or how the
Speaker 1: transmission works.
Speaker 2: Well, it's a concept cars. You know, like people that
Speaker 2: like design stuff for auto manufacturers that maybe, well it's
Speaker 2: their job just to design kind of the aesthetic and
Speaker 2: they don't have to worry about any of that stuff.
Speaker 2: And then a lot of times those don't go anywhere
Speaker 2: because they just don't make logistical sense to manufacture. But
Speaker 2: if you're one of those people, and that's where your
Speaker 2: passion is, worry for a company like this is a
Speaker 2: dream come true because that's all you do. You just
Speaker 2: churn these.
Speaker 1: Out and you just dream. You know, that's that's kind
Speaker 1: of good. And so there's much more to the story.
Speaker 1: Of course, Hot Wheels and Mattel continue gathering more people,
Speaker 1: legends like Larry Wood join the Hot Wheels team. It
Speaker 1: goes on and on. But now you are perhaps thinking
Speaker 1: ridiculous historians. You're saying, Noel Max Ben, You've set up
Speaker 1: these two juggernauts of a very weird specific industry. What
Speaker 1: happens when worlds collide. That's what we will answer in
Speaker 1: part two of this week special series. Big big thanks,
Speaker 1: of course to our research associate, doctor z the legend
Speaker 1: doctor Z who you know, Noel. I think I think
Speaker 1: Zach probably has some hot wheels.
Speaker 3: He probably does.
Speaker 1: I think I might have a few. Well.
Speaker 2: You know, my very dear friend Harry, you know very well,
Speaker 2: is a collector, a big record collector. But also some
Speaker 2: of the matchbox and wheels cars that he has in
Speaker 2: this collection are quite valuable. You mentioned the red stripes
Speaker 2: on those tires for the what was it, the Sweet sixteen. Yeah,
Speaker 2: those are worth you know, I mean two hundred, two
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty bucks a pop.
Speaker 1: And if you have some of those toys kicking around,
Speaker 1: save them, you know what I mean, Save them for
Speaker 1: someone that you think will really enjoy them. Right, Just
Speaker 1: don't just throw them out when you're moving, is what
Speaker 1: we're saying. We're also saying that we're going to start
Speaker 1: to amp things up in part two when we learn
Speaker 1: a little bit about the conflict between matchbox and hot wheels.
Speaker 1: It's a bit of a pepsiv coke kind of Highland
Speaker 1: moment or four versus Ferrari just so and big big thanks,
Speaker 1: of course to Max Williams, big thanks to Alex Williams
Speaker 1: who composed this slamming track, Big big thanks to Jonathan Strickland,
Speaker 1: who I from what I understand, he's the type of
Speaker 1: dude who just took the wheels off the toy cars.
Speaker 3: He just wants to watch the world burn. We'll see
Speaker 3: you next time, folks.
Speaker 2: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.