[HN Gopher] The Rise and Fall of Matchbox's Toy-Car Empire
___________________________________________________________________
The Rise and Fall of Matchbox's Toy-Car Empire
Author : NaOH
Score : 159 points
Date : 2024-10-15 20:51 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.hagerty.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.hagerty.com)
| grendelt wrote:
| > Whereas a Hot Wheels is designed to race down those iconic
| orange tracks, and often feature wild customizations or complete
| fantasy builds, a Matchbox is more realistic and accurate.
|
| This is exactly what I've noticed with a little one that loves
| toy cars. We often end up getting Matchbox because they're cooler
| and not meant to only rocket down a Hot Wheels track. Hot Wheels
| are too much fantasy these days, Matchbox is where it's at.
| glimshe wrote:
| As a kid I also liked them because they were heavier and felt
| higher quality for that reason.
| jgalt212 wrote:
| Have recent experience with both. Hot Wheels makes both replica
| and fantasy cars. IMO, replica Hot Wheels are better than
| equivalent Matchbox.
| ourmandave wrote:
| I had Hot Wheels orange tracks with loop-the-loops and stuff.
|
| But also had the glow-in-the-dark fold out Matchbox City in a
| suitcase.
| rjsw wrote:
| There were Matchbox tracks too.
| securingsincity wrote:
| My dad kept a lot of his old hot wheels from the late 60s and
| what is fascinating is those orange tracks even from then still
| fit with tracks you can buy today. They've modified the design
| but they still connect.
|
| Makes you think will what you build keep the same interface or
| at least backwards compatibility 50 years from now? Probably
| not and most wouldn't blame you. But it brought us a lot of joy
| to take things we bought in target that day and connect them to
| those old sets.
| bitwize wrote:
| What's neat about the tracks is that Mattel had a variety of
| toy lines compatible with them. They marketed a Hot Wheels
| variant called Sizzlers that had a tiny motor inside, powered
| by a small nickel-cadmium battery. You charged it up with a
| battery-powered charger called the "Juice Machine" (sold
| separately) and the motor would make the car go. There was
| also a line of electric trains called "Hotline" that would
| run on the orange tracks; these were also charged with the
| Juice Machine.
|
| My nephew ended up getting all my Hot Wheels tracks, and yes,
| they were forward compatible with new tracks and with all his
| 1:64 cars. When he was four he would stage elaborate crash
| scenarios on them, which he called "challenges". I would talk
| to him in the voice of the Homestar Runner character
| Stinkoman (an alternate, anime version of Strong Bad), e.g.
| "That was an exciting challenge! I was excited by the
| challenge!" Whenever he was playing with his Hot Wheels and I
| was around, he would exhort me to "do the challenge voice
| again!"
| whoopdedo wrote:
| > Makes you think will what you build keep the same interface
| or at least backwards compatibility 50 years from now?
|
| SMTP comes to mind.
| Mindwipe wrote:
| TBF Hot Wheels do both, but the realistic ones tend to be
| significantly more expensive, and hence mainly not bought
| by/for kids .
| thinkingtoilet wrote:
| Hot Wheels has a ton of realistic cars if you want them. It's
| also legal to use them not on an official track.
| chrisdhoover wrote:
| My 4th grade teacher used the orange track to swat hands and
| backsides. The worst offender in class was taken to the book
| room and disciplined. I swear the both liked it. She also
| brought a refrigerator card board box in and set over him and
| his desk.
| pge wrote:
| As an American growing up in the late 70s/early 80s, we called
| all die-cast metal cars "matchbox cars," even though many (all?)
| of them were Hot Wheels. I never knew there were two competing
| brands.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| Growing up in a french speaking country, we'd call _all_
| ballpoint pens "bic".
|
| Because of this:
|
| https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bic_(entreprise)
|
| Up to this day many still say, on a daily basis, say, a "bic
| bleu" (blue ballpen) or "bic noir" (black ballpen).
|
| And virtually everyone french speaking calls a refrigerator
| (fridge) a "frigo".
| MEMORYC_RRUPTED wrote:
| Goes even further than purely French speaking, we do the
| exact same thing in the Dutch speaking part of Belgium!
| tetris11 wrote:
| I was puzzled when I sneezed in Germany and someone asked if
| I wanted a Tempo.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| I was shocked when I first started participating in
| discussions on-line on international boards like this one,
| some 10+ years ago, and discovered that in America, you
| sneeze into a Kleenex and cut stuff with X-Acto knives.
|
| Then again, we've been calling a certain class of shoes
| "Adidas" since 1990s, so I shouldn't be surprised by the
| phenomenon. Not to mention, I don't think anyone in Poland
| ever used the generic term for a photocopier - we all call
| it "ksero" machines (from Xerox).
| nine_k wrote:
| X-Acto knives are a specific type of knives, builder's or
| craftsman's, not chef's.
|
| Equally, a Bic is not any ball pen at all, but a specific
| inexpensive, usually faceted kind, AFAICT.
|
| Xerox, on the other hand, were the original inventors of
| the particular photocopy process.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _X-Acto knives are a specific type of knives, builder
| 's or craftsman's, not chef's._
|
| Right, but that's still a quite large and generic product
| category, produced by many manufacturers and sold by many
| vendors - while "X-Acto" is a specific US brand of a
| specific US company.
|
| > _Equally, a Bic is not any ball pen at all, but a
| specific inexpensive, usually faceted kind, AFAICT._
|
| Yeah, here we didn't call random ballpoint pens "Bic" -
| the name was used to refer to only to the specific brand
| of cheap and shitty orange pens that were easy to find
| anywhere and which no one wanted to use.
|
| > _Xerox, on the other hand, were the original inventors
| of the particular photocopy process._
|
| Here it's long been a verb. You don't copy documents, you
| _xero_ documents.
| onemoresoop wrote:
| I did grow up on the eastern block (not Poland) and we
| also called Adidas shoes a type of sneakers that could be
| a different brand, it was the style that we called them
| like that. There were a lot more genericized
| trademarks/eponyms. I can think of two more: one for Blue
| Jeans which sounded something like "blu Gee" (from blue
| jeans) and "Jeep" which we called any car that looked
| like a Jeep but of any brand.
| diego_moita wrote:
| In Brazilian Portuguese:
|
| * Cornstarch is called maizena
|
| * Adhesive bandages are called bandaid
|
| * Instant noodles are called miojo
|
| * Yogurt sold in small pots are called danone
|
| * Chewing gum is called chiclete (from Chiclets)
|
| * Photocopies are xerox
|
| * Bouillion is knorr
|
| * Glass plates are pyrex
|
| * Scooters are lambretta
|
| * Soluble cofee is nescafe
|
| * Sunglasses are rayban
|
| And same goes for teflon, jacuzzi, velcro, tupperware,
| vaseline, botox, googling, ...etc, etc
| speeder wrote:
| I never realized Lambretta was actually a manufacturer
| until I moved to Europe and saw a store selling Lambrettas.
|
| When I was a kid in Brazil everyone called all scooters
| Lambrettas, even though none of them were Lambrettas. They
| usually were... Vespas.
|
| Now that I know it is actually rivalling companies, I
| wonder how sad Lambretta and Vespa companies are, with
| eveyrone calling their Vespa a Lambretta.
| diego_moita wrote:
| The funniest of them all is durex.
|
| In Brazil is the name and brand of adhesive tape. In
| Portugal is the name and brand of condoms.
| pier25 wrote:
| Same with Mexico and Spain
| postexitus wrote:
| Funny enough, in Turkey, it's the other way around.
| Scooters are called Vespas, and actually none of them are
| Vespas.
| fullstop wrote:
| * Chewing gum is called chiclete (from Chiclets)
|
| This is probably derived from the Sapodilla / Chicle tree,
| and not the little square chewing gums.
| liotier wrote:
| I'm French and I didn't know that Maizena is a brand of
| cornstarch instead of a generic product called maizena...
| So that is why it I always thought it was so similar to
| cornstarch !
| AStonesThrow wrote:
| _The Chiclets name is derived from the Mexican Spanish word
| "chicle", derived from the Aztec Nahuatl word
| "chictli/tzictli", meaning "sticky stuff" and referring to
| a pre-Columbian chewing gum found throughout Mesoamerica.
| This pre-Columbian chewing gum was tapped as a sap from
| various trees._
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiclets#History
| dghf wrote:
| In the UK, any ballpoint pen is commonly a biro for similar
| reasons.
| alias_neo wrote:
| Hoover, Cellotape, Pritt-Stick, Velcro, Coke, iPad, Google,
| WD40, Fairy liquid...
|
| Some were so ubiquitous that I grew up not knowing some of
| the things we say are actually brands until I was older.
| haunter wrote:
| Same in my country with mechanical pencils called rotring
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotring
| onemoresoop wrote:
| I grew up in the Eastern block and I remember my grandma's
| set of Rotring mechanical pens (with ink) was promised to
| me the day I turned 18 but I so wanted that set when I was
| much younger (in fact at an age I was still playing with
| Matchbox cars). As I remember they were very finnicky and
| needed to be declogged quite frequently.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| I was a proud owner of their Rapidiograph technical pens as
| a teenager. I didn't realize they made mechanical pencils
| too.
| jareklupinski wrote:
| it took me a while to realize i've been calling "Adidas-y" by
| their brand name every time i wanted new shoes in Polish
| krisoft wrote:
| In hungary trash bins are called "kuka" after the brand name
| of Keller und Knappich Augsburg (the makers of those nice
| orange robot arms) become genericized.
| ctippett wrote:
| In Australia cooler boxes are known as an Esky (chilly bin in
| New Zealand), Weber for charcoal barbecues, Texta for felt-
| tip pens - there's probably a whole lot more I'm not
| remembering.
| withinboredom wrote:
| In the Netherlands, they call roller blades the extinct brand
| name: Skeelers.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| I had this exact experience in the 90s, except I called them
| all Hot Wheels having no clue Matchbox existed. Shocking how
| much can change so quickly.
| parpfish wrote:
| Same. I also referred to all transforming robot toys as
| "gobots"
| nemo44x wrote:
| Gobots were Transformers for poor kids.
| parpfish wrote:
| are you telling me that the rich kids never got to
| experience the excitement of an awesome robot transforming
| into... a rock?
|
| https://gbwiki.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Rock_Lords_(toyline)
| bregma wrote:
| Growing up in the 1960s we called them all Dinky Toys. Dinky
| was the best: they even had die-cast UFO SHADO interceptors and
| Space:1999 Eagles in the 1970s when I was too old for such
| things (but still secretly coveted them).
| mjmsmith wrote:
| Joe 90 jet car!
| rob74 wrote:
| > _Mattel is looking over its various intellectual properties and
| imagining a Scrooge McDuck-sized swimming pool of cash._
|
| Pah, these small reporters with their small ambitions! Scrooge
| McDuck didn't have a "pool of cash", he had a _whole silo-sized
| building filled with cash_ , and the "pool" that he used to swim
| in was merely the visible surface of it:
| https://www.duckipedia.de/images/archive/d/d3/20230517100725...
| chongli wrote:
| Also Scrooge's cash was in the form of gold coins that
| appreciate in value as commodity gold does. If it were a silo
| full of fiat currency it would be depreciating with inflation!
| rwmj wrote:
| But better would be a swimming pool full of stock
| certificates.
| Filligree wrote:
| He tried that; it wasn't better. Though arguably only due
| to Scrooge's naivety.
| foobarian wrote:
| He probably got greedy and didn't stick to plain old
| boring index certificates and bonds.
| adventured wrote:
| Gold doesn't appreciate in value. It's an important
| distinction when considering investments. It tends to act as
| a store of value, that is it retains value. While the dollar
| price of gold goes up (now ~$2700 (!) as the dollar keeps
| imploding over time), that isn't the same as it appreciating
| in _value_. The dollar is losing value, gold is what is
| staying still in terms of value. And while that isn 't always
| perfectly accurate (certainly gold sometimes varies upwards
| or downwards in value for various supply etc reasons), it
| tends to be mostly correct.
|
| The reason it's an important distinction is because eg the
| S&P500 will tend to smash gold over time as a value
| generative asset (because gold is not a productive,
| generative asset; gold holds value, the S&P500 generates
| value (profit/growth/etc)).
| kobalsky wrote:
| is there a gold to big mac index to track the valuation
| drift?
| hotspot_one wrote:
| yes, but... if you invested 1K USD in gold and 1K USDin a
| SP500 index fund in 1971, both of those investments would
| be worth the same dollar amount today.
|
| perhaps that's an artifact of gold's recent spike in price,
| but perhaps the SP500 is also in the middle of a giant
| bubble.
|
| https://www.macrotrends.net/1437/sp500-to-gold-ratio-chart
|
| Go ahead, cherry-pick some other dates to tell the story
| you want!
| kgwgk wrote:
| > both of those investments would be worth the same
| dollar amount today
|
| Only one of those investments would also have generated
| thousands of dollars of income in the meantime.
| mywittyname wrote:
| From what I can tell, this tracks just the S&P500 index,
| but ignores dividends.
|
| The S&P500 return with dividends reinvested since 1971 is
| $257 for every dollar invested. Gold is $8 for every
| dollar invested.
|
| And that's with 1971 being the lowest gold price in 100
| years and the current price being nearly the highest in
| 100 years.
|
| For reference, the CPI inflation calculator puts
| inflation at 7.9x since 1971. So gold track inflation in
| the best case scenario.
| chiph wrote:
| Something I realized later was that gold is much denser than
| ducks. So Scrooge could not have dived into his silo of gold
| without injuries equivalent to diving onto a sidewalk. Ehh,
| it was still a great visual.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| No, no, that's an explicit skill of his. A villain once
| steals his fortune with the goal of diving in line he does
| and just bounces off the surface, hurting themself.
| bernds74 wrote:
| Donald could be pretty dense at times.
| jandrese wrote:
| People have noted this for some time and I think the comics
| even gave him a superpower where money can never hurt
| Scrooge.
| qingcharles wrote:
| Relevant:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viDL2W0HcJw
| mgraupner wrote:
| Growing up in the Eastern Bloc, it was such a joy to own/get an
| original Matchbox. Memories...
| bitwize wrote:
| I remember Matchbox cars and had a few. I mainly had Hot Wheels
| and a few off-brand toy cars. And I kept all my 1:64 cars in a
| carrying case with Fast 111s branding, another die-cast line by
| Kenner whose gimmick was tiny license plate decals on the rear of
| each vehicle, each with a random state and number.
|
| But Matchbox really sticks out in my mind as the manufacturer of
| the die-cast Voltron toy that _every_ kid wanted in the mid-1980s
| -- and only rich kids got; at $60 in 1985 or nearly $175 in today
| 's dollars, that shit's _steep_. I did end up with the Panosh
| Place plastic Voltron. It was plastic, and the lions didn 't
| combine in a show-accurate way to form Voltron, but I didn't
| care, it was Voltron.
|
| These days, we have Transformers from Robosen that transform on
| their own and respond to voice commands -- so rich kids'
| Christmases are on a whole 'nother level now.
| throwup238 wrote:
| https://us.robosen.com/products/flagship-megatron
|
| Holy crap...
| Loughla wrote:
| I had two legs of the die-cast Voltron that my rich, snotty
| cousin gave me when he lost the other pieces. They were so big
| and heavy and just so _cool_. That, combined with my
| thundercats dagger (that came free with my sweet thundercats
| underwear) made me the coolest kid on my schoolbus for like
| three weeks.
| rwmj wrote:
| There are a bunch of youtubers who restore Matchbox vehicles, eg
| https://www.youtube.com/user/pso316a/videos
| flohofwoe wrote:
| Those things were pretty popular in East Germany as present from
| your relatives across the border or bought at the 'Intershop'
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intershop).
|
| I still have a shoebox or two full of Matchbox cars in the attic.
|
| Also I remember that during my job education as (industrial) tool
| maker in East Germany our master used to rave about Matchbox cars
| (and specifically Matchbox, not other brands) and how
| surprisingly hard it is to build the precision tools needed for
| creating such fine detail, and how baffled he was that western
| companies could afford to build such production lines "just for
| toys" - in that sense, Matchbox was even an effective Cold War
| propaganda weapon ;)
| chiph wrote:
| Part of me thinks "Oh they're just cast from cheap pot-metal"
| But if he was talking about the machining needed to make the
| molds (in a pre-CNC environment), including multi-part molds to
| allow for parts of the car that curved in (i.e. not a straight
| lift-out on release), then yes. The tooling needed to make them
| in volume, at the quality they needed, was pretty impressive
| for "just a toy"
|
| So add Matchbox cars to Levi's 501s as subversive western
| imports. :)
| nosianu wrote:
| As another Ex-GDR citizen here, I think the most subversive
| were the thick shopping catalogs of the big West-German mail-
| order companies (Otto, Quelle, Conrad [Electronics]).
|
| I don't remember how or why we got them, but for some reason
| we did, once in a while. I think they _should_ have been
| confiscated at the border, but apparently enough West German
| visitors happened to have one with them on visits, that
| remained undiscovered, or they were left in some of the many
| parcels (especially around Christmas time) sent from West to
| East Germany.
|
| We would look through those thick foto-color glossy paper
| catalogs, looking at one unobtainable item after another. In
| every category, from clothes, furniture, tools, toys, to
| electronics. The difference in quality was several decades,
| the difference in variety and quantity was at least two
| orders of magnitude, with many items having no equivalent at
| all in the East.
|
| The paper and the print quality alone were on another level,
| and they made that for a throwaway shopping catalog?
|
| Just for comparison, when I turned 14 and was given some
| money I spent about 1100 East German Marks on a mono cassette
| recorder (https://ddr-hifi-technik.de/wp-
| content/uploads/2023/03/IMG_2...). At the same time a stereo
| recorder's price in West Germany was something like 99 DM. I
| could not afford the East German stereo variant, that would
| have cost 1400 East German marks. A typical salary in East
| Germany was around 1000 East German Marks.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Thanks for telling your story. I always find stories like
| this to be fascinating.
| neilv wrote:
| > _Matchbox was even an effective Cold War propaganda weapon
| ;)_
|
| Some Soviet exposure to Matchbox might well have been
| intentional by the West, given that we now know there was
| energetic and creative propaganda, including the CIA propping
| up an entire art movement:
|
| https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/modern-art-was-cia-...
|
| Today, spies can just robo-post on their adversaries' social
| media apps, to neutralize a dozen years of formative education.
| crispyambulance wrote:
| Matchbox cars were the best!
|
| In particular, they tended to roll much better than Hot Wheels.
|
| The "axles" were some kind of fine spring steel. The matchbox
| cars had noticeably less drag than other brands and rolled
| farther and more straight. The plastic on the wheels was more
| flexible and smooth.
|
| I do think that some thought went into how these things rolled.
| Or maybe I am mis-remembering my childhood experiences? I guess I
| will never find out!
| flohofwoe wrote:
| Nope, Matchbox were indeed the best. They were incredibly high
| quality compared to similar brands. Really surprising for such
| a cheap mass-produced toy.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| It's interesting that Hot Wheels got the Coke and Matchbox
| seemed like Pepsi to me, someone that was from the outside. I
| wonder why. Maybe the name is just better.
| RandallBrown wrote:
| Interesting. I remember my Hot Wheels rolling better than the
| few Matchbox cars I had (early 90s). Maybe the Matchbox cars I
| had were older and left over from my brother, or maybe the
| quality had changed at that point.
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| Before the early 1960's I was a preschooler and like many
| American kids had gotten a Matchbox car in a Christmas
| stocking one year.
|
| They came in a little box that had the two-tone artistic
| motif intended to be reminiscent of an actual box of
| traditional wooden matches.
|
| It's hard to remember if they were all right-side steering,
| but the boxes were definitely made for the North American
| market, and naturally in the days of non-fiat currency were
| permanently imprinted with the purchase price in US terms
| which was 50c. Approximately half the size and twice the
| price of a pack of cigarettes. Like anything else there was
| no foreseeable reason that the price would be expected to
| increase whatsoever. A half-dollar for something like this
| was recognized as truly overpriced already compared to many
| other types of toys, but sooner or later most young boys had
| one or more.
|
| In Florida most people still went back up north during the
| summer, except for a number of hardy retirees who actually
| liked the sub-tropical environment. Remember almost nobody
| had air conditioning yet except for banks and supermarkets.
| Which had big lobbies where senior citizens would congregate
| daily, of course banks closed at 2:00 PM and no supermarket
| opened before 8:00 AM or remained open much after dark. If
| you wanted some essentials outside those business hours your
| only choice was a 7-11 store, which as the name implies, was
| open from 7:00 AM to 11:00 PM. But on a Sunday many of those
| 7-11's had not yet defied tradition, and were not open for
| business, just like anything else.
|
| In the local Eckerd Drugs store, they had small selection of
| various toys in one aisle, and had been carrying Matchbox
| cars obviously since before I was born. And a few of those
| were still on the shelf, priced at 35c. These were the
| unpopular oddball construction models or very unfamiliar
| designs that did not resemble any American cars. Apparently
| 35c was the price they were when it was closer to the
| immediate post-war period. So all the mainstream models had
| been picked over for years before I became a student and
| earned an allowance of 25c per week for various household
| chores. Remember back then there was only a small percent of
| the number of kids in the Florida "snowbird" cities compared
| to any ordinary US state, since most residents were over 65
| years old. When they would buy a Matchbox for a grandchild
| the purchase was usually made up north where the
| grandchildren were, but when the kids came down to visit
| grandma in Florida they would sometimes get one. However
| there was a great deal of hesitation for someone born in the
| 19th century to pay 50c for such a small toy. Or anything
| else where you could detect the least bit of overpricing. A
| lot of them were still in shock from the pre-war devaluation
| of the US dollar, where _their parents ' generation_ of
| private ownership of gold was first outlawed, confiscated and
| reimbursed at a "fair" price, before the devaluation could be
| accomplished. This had been so painful that there was
| somewhat of a backlash of attitude that it could never happen
| again outside of another world war brewing.
|
| Anyway, I don't think the Matchbox factory built very many
| different models at one time. Probably doing a large run of
| each new model, which would go into inventory and sell for
| years while the factory retooled for the next designs. So
| they would arrive in the stores like comic books, on a
| regular basis the store would get about a dozen of a new
| model, about half would fly off the shelf and the rest of the
| new ones would join the other recent models so there was
| always a selection of between 10 and 20 different choices,
| other than the few dusty old 35c items. I would imagine when
| a certain model sold out at Eckerd it would be restocked
| until factory inventory had been fully depleted. There were a
| number that I had wanted to buy but were sold out before I
| could save the money. But there was always something
| interesting and new on a regular basis.
|
| I would save my money and try to purchase one per month, I
| didn't know the value of the dollar to begin with but I
| thought they were nifty. Kids who had them did feel kind of
| fortunate having a _fancy imported_ toy, even if it was a
| small example.
|
| A very big number of pre-teens back then had been born up
| north where their family had traditionally earned twice as
| much for generations compared to Florida, where there wasn't
| even 10 percent as many career opportunities, most anything
| else would be considered minimum wage today. Of course there
| were no "minimum-wage" regulations yet.
|
| Well they just didn't value the dollar as highly as we did,
| and didn't take as good care of their toys by nature.
|
| These were models worthy of display when new, but kids played
| with them, plowing through the sand, crashing into each other
| and stuff. One thing was, the paint on some chipped real
| easily, they could be dented and they only rolled as well as
| you would expect from a model descended from things
| originally produced mainly for sitting on a shelf
| decoratively.
|
| Once there were more numerous spoiled kids who had moved
| down, and Matchbox got more popular, those kids were rapidly
| accumulating more than I had which took me years.
|
| But I was careful only to crash a small number of mine,
| especially since most of them were irreplaceable and had not
| been available for years. Eventually they had collector cases
| that held a couple dozen, and I had two cases where only a
| handful were not in mint condition.
|
| One day, Hotwheels came out and as the name implies all the
| focus had been on making them roll so much more friction-free
| as a more fun playable toy than the Matchboxes which just
| happened to have rolling wheels. A Matchbox would only roll a
| few feet or less but Hotwheels would go across the room, so
| much of the time not stopping until it did crash into
| something. Then they got the fast tracks for Christmas, and
| the whole novelty was because Matchboxes were everywhere by
| then, but nobody ever dreamed there could be a little car
| like this that was the least bit speedy. So it was a real
| game-changer and they flew off the shelf. I only ever added
| about a half-dozen Hotwheels to my carrying case which I
| would bring to my friends house where he had dozens of banged
| up Matchboxes he had been crashing along with my limited
| number of non-mint cars for a couple years. By that time
| silver US coins had then been discontinued, replaced by much
| less worthy metals, Matchboxes had risen to 55c but Hotwheels
| were over a dollar.
|
| He would set up the tracks that covered the floor in his
| room, and his mom would let him keep it that way for weeks.
|
| The next summer we did the same thing but by then we had
| basically outgrown them, we spent more time riding our bikes
| to the beach, fishing or skateboarding than playing with
| toys, even in the air-conditioning which had become much more
| common by then. People who had it were cooling to 80F (27C),
| it was such a luxury but quite costly for those paying the
| electric bill.
|
| One day she picked up all the tracks and cars, put them in
| his closet with other less-utilized toys and they remodeled
| his room. Mine were in there somewhere and I didn't really
| think about it for a couple more years when I figured I
| should bring my cases back home even if I was not going to
| play with them any more, they were a pretty good collection.
|
| Too late, she had already donated about half the closet to
| Goodwill, never to be seen again :(
| ABraidotti wrote:
| I did not expect to read such a great story in this thread.
| Thanks for taking the time to write that. It was great.
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| With this it kind of brings back the memory of the
| Matchboxes having more involvement with the imagination,
| like where the child would visualize being in the car and
| driving it to destinations like they were adults, and
| sometimes all getting together in parking lots around
| Lego buildings. Of course all Lego had at the time was
| buildings.
|
| You know what I mean where most of the time is spent with
| your hand on the hardtop of the toy car guiding it all
| around with proper motor noises in accompaniment :)
|
| You feel like you're driving a brand new 1960 Jaguar over
| to the brand new McDonald's when you grow up. Which just
| appeared not far from the old Burger King, where they
| already had Whoppers. McDonald's were small burgers only,
| for many years before the Quarter Pounder came out but at
| least they were only 12c each so you could have more than
| one.
|
| The king sitting on top of the sign was a jolly fat guy,
| but the gleaming tiled golden arches seemed like the kind
| of thing you would see at Disneyland.
|
| By the time the 1964 Mustang came out it was so popular
| there was soon a Matchbox replica.
|
| Walt Disney himself was probably not yet dreaming about
| building an attraction in Florida, although maybe his
| secret buying of swampland was already underway.
|
| We felt so sorry for the "poor" kids in the relatively
| small city of Orlando, the only true "city" without a
| beach, how could their parents move them there? Well, one
| reason was to work at NASA where there was a Moon shot
| going on. But the small resort town of Cocoa Beach near
| Cape Canaveral was not an attractive enough destination
| for recruiting the most advanced engineers for a multi-
| year project of a lifetime, when they would mostly
| appreciate a more metropolitan lifestyle. So Orlando it
| was and they soon built the Beeline Expressway straight
| from the suburbs to Cocoa. It was high-toll low traffic
| at the beginning but everybody went 100+mph so they could
| commute to NASA and the cops didn't give tickets for the
| first few years when it was basically like a private
| highway for NASA people to get to the Moon sooner. The
| Sunoco stations where you could choose your own octane
| well above 100 R+M/2 allowed anybody to be filled up with
| base stock live blended using different levels of
| tetraethyl lead to their satisfaction, which really made
| a difference with big American V8 gasoline engines as
| well as high performance sports cars. Some of those
| Sunocos even made it into the self-serve era.
|
| One more thing is, the Matchboxes would often go "off-
| road" into carpeted areas by hand, up and down furniture,
| etc and it was not that much different than the pavement
| when your imagination is doing most of the effort.
|
| With Hotwheels, the car itself performed so well you
| didn't need that much imagination any more, it was not
| zero but you were also not imagining the same type
| things.
|
| And there was no similarity at all between the carpeted
| areas and the places where Hotwheels would really roll.
|
| But you didn't even have to grow up that much to realize
| there weren't going to be any brand new Ford Mustangs
| like they had in 1964, especially not as affordable, by
| the time you were old enough to get your license.
|
| Too late for Boomers born in the second half of the
| '50's, at that "early" point in the the trailing edge,
| the huge cohort that was only a few years ahead was
| abundant enough that most everything phenomenal had
| already been spoken for as you go along, so kids and
| adults only a few years older are the ones that set the
| stereotype of the well-off Boomers as a whole born into a
| more prosperous America. There's still only so much to go
| around, those born in 1958 or later are so far out of the
| spectrum that it's a whole different generation, but it's
| been disappearing the whole time since its peak. Actually
| for those who are about 66 years old now, there was not
| but a small a fraction of the opportunity left as there
| was for those born about 1953 or so. With an even more
| dramatic difference in their ability to come out on the
| other side when the Nixon Recession came along, in the
| way it was orchestrated.
|
| One generation doesn't really have any advantage over
| another due to any vague sinister events, even when
| crooked dishonest "leaders" like Nixon get elected and do
| maximum damage. It's really just the occasional or
| gradual currency devaluation, whether blatant or implied.
|
| You really don't need anything more sinister than that to
| get us where we are now.
|
| I still wish I had my old Matchbox collection which is
| probably worth about $500 a case now, even if only due to
| inflation :\
| randomcarbloke wrote:
| I think Hot Wheels roll better and further but are otherwise
| inferior in almost every respect - thinner metals, chippier
| paint, slightly off-scale.
| dylan604 wrote:
| The "axles" on Hot Wheels were a joke of a very thin metal
| wire. I had many Hot Wheels with bent axles, but I don't
| remember any of the Matchbox cars doing that. Sadly, as an
| adult spending enough time on the road as a driver, I've seen
| my fair share of real cars with wheels that eerily reminded me
| of those Hot Wheels.
| fsckboy wrote:
| > _they tended to roll much better than Hot Wheels_
|
| The older history is different.
|
| I was already a Matchbox fan when HotWheels were first
| introduced: HotWheels invented the "give it a push and it rolls
| a good distance" type of wheels-on-wire-axles, slick enough
| that they could make the HotWheels race track with the spinning
| rubber capstan sending the cars all the way around the track. A
| Matchbox's wheels would turn, but it would only roll inches if
| given a push.
|
| Matchbox was getting crushed in the market. Then a year or two
| later (a long time when you're a kid) they introduced the
| Matchbox Superfast line which had the same type of wire-sprung
| wheels, but they still weren't as good at rolling as HotWheels.
|
| but being a child on-the-spectrum I was pretty upset by the
| whole thing for another reason, because Matchbox cars were
| realistic reproductions of actual car models (Maserati Ghibli);
| HotWheels cars were imaginary fantasy cars (Green Goblin or
| something), and I couldn't stand them, I liked realism and my
| favorite way to play with them had a lot of parallel parking...
| but HotWheels were better.
|
| so the end of the story is... I hit puberty
| wavefunction wrote:
| Matchbox were made of metal too, not mostly plastic with minimal
| metal like many of today's toys for children. I gave some of the
| ones my little brother and I played with in the early 1980s to my
| neighbor's kid last year. They were a little scratched and
| scuffed in places but that just added to the versimiltude. They
| had all the wheels and the hoods and doors and other moving parts
| still move and close.
| neilv wrote:
| Years ago, with the help of eBay, I built a "dream" small
| collection of Matchbox cars that I would've liked in childhood,
| and that would've practically been impossible to find amongst
| brick&mortar stores then.
|
| Sorry, I'll admit I unboxed the ones still boxed, since I think
| toys are meant to be out and played with, not pumped collectible
| investments.
|
| (I no longer have them, though. I was selling my Concept 2 erg,
| in preparation for moving house, and the buyer noticed my
| Matchbox dream collection in a tray on the table, and remarked
| that her nephew/grandson would love those. She'd just given me
| several hundred dollars for the rowing machine, and I was moving,
| so I threw in the Matchbox cars.)
| whamlastxmas wrote:
| That's a cute anecdote, thanks for sharing :)
| opwieurposiu wrote:
| A theme in the Toy Story movies was collectors vs. kids, and
| the toys always seemed to prefer being with the kids.
|
| I think you made the right decision.
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| >> A theme in the Toy Story movies was collectors vs. kids,
| and the toys always seemed to prefer being with the kids.
|
| I suspect my Barbies would have preferred to be with a
| collector and keep all their limbs and eyes and hair.
| #Barbicide
| p3rls wrote:
| Counterpoint: the kid probably won't appreciate it and will
| be back on fortnite within hours
| yial wrote:
| Love that you threw them in. I've found this funny as an adult
| in my life-- you may spend time collecting xyz, but suddenly
| letting it go can be easy in certain situations.
| ghaff wrote:
| I have various things that I don't really want but I'd hate
| to just toss in the trash. Would love to find someone who
| would value them for at least a while. I'm going to give
| moving a couple of them a shot in November.
| neilv wrote:
| If they're practically ship-able, eBay excels at this.
|
| Or, some niche items can be sold on Web forums (e.g., for
| particular retrocomputing platforms).
|
| I also give away stuff locally, on CraigsList and a nearby
| university list, and on the curb.
|
| (But I never put an item in the "free stuff" category of
| CraigsList. Always list in the topical category, and don't
| label it as free in the metadata, even if it is. Too many
| aggressive flippers and mentally ill people monitoring
| specifically for anything free, and IME it'll tend to be a
| big time-waste and a questionable new home.)
| phkahler wrote:
| I sold the last of my vector arcade games to a friend when I
| was moving (Tempest and Space Duel). I threw in a PCB from
| Major Havoc too just to give it a good home. A few days later
| I decided to price check that board and some collector had
| recently paid $1200 for one. I was happy it went to a decent
| home instead of sitting on my shelf.
| AceyMan wrote:
| I would give a limb to own a real Tempest arcade console. I
| cannot fathom how many quarters of mine the local box ate
| when I was a kid. To me, it was the best gameplay _and_
| graphics of the era.
|
| The vibrancy of the color vector graphics made Space
| Invaders and Defender look lame by comparison.
| randomcarbloke wrote:
| How odd, I have a collection of Hot Wheels though for my entire
| life I've preferred the feel of Matchbox, and I have an erg at
| which I suffer for hours a week.
|
| I don't intend to sell my erg but I'm currently in the process
| of selling my Hot Wheels collection...I wonder if the buyer
| will notice my erg and remark how much they too love torturing
| themselves and would I perhaps sell it to them.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| I still like to collect these. Something about small toy cars
| with intricate details really tickles me. I really like classic
| car lego sets too. Great read
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Matchbox was certainly the gold standard when I was young (in
| France). I don't recall ever hearing of Hot Wheels -- maybe those
| were just in the US?
| ericd wrote:
| Funny, I've always thought the French Majorette were the best.
| Many of them had pretty good suspension which helped a lot in
| rolling across uneven ground.
| musha68k wrote:
| Same here, because of that and some of the more extravagant
| models at "low coin" :)
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| maybe the Matchbox ones were more "desirable" at that time
| because they were imported? I can't remember anymore (this
| was mid- to late- 70s).
| paulorlando wrote:
| I have a set of hand-me-down Matchbox and Hot Wheels cars I had
| growing up. There's an astounding difference between them and the
| newer ones my kids have been given. I actually use that
| difference as a lesson in workmanship to my kids. See, you can
| choose to make things cost less and take less material, but
| there's a tradeoff in quality....
| maeil wrote:
| Hugged to death, or just geoblocking whole countries for no good
| reason? Getting a 403.
| alisonatwork wrote:
| Geoblocked for me too, it happens to me fairly regularly. A
| bunch of sites seem to just ban the whole continent of Asia.
| rithikjainNd01 wrote:
| Even as a child I preferred Matchbox over Hotwheels. I still buy
| a cool looking moving parts or construction vehicle if I find it
| interesting. Cool article!
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| This article made me wonder what ever happened to Micro Machines.
| They just sort of dissappeared from the public consciousness. It
| seems like the brand (Micro Machines) was stopped from
| production, and its IP sort of died away when Galoob was bought
| by Hasbro [1]
|
| I used to have a huge collection of them. My mom amazingly kept
| them around, and now my kids have a huge collection to play. What
| a present!
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_Machines
| seattle_spring wrote:
| I had so many Micro Machines, and I've been wondering the same
| thing about their fate for years. I thought they were so much
| cooler than Matchbox or Hot Wheels. There were tons of Micro
| Machine airplanes too!
| showerst wrote:
| Micro machines were awesome! I still remember the commercials
| with the fast talker.
|
| It's funny how a random thing can date you so specifically, it
| seems like their heyday was only from 1987-1994 or so.
| russdill wrote:
| I think there was a consumer safety issue that made it hard for
| to hit their core demographic. iirc their small size got them a
| "5 and up" recommendation.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Or perhaps it was a consumer perceived safety issue. I notice
| parent these days seems very concerned about choking hazards
| compared to 20 years ago.
| whartung wrote:
| In my day, we had roughly 3 classes.
|
| Tootsie Toy, which, originally, were either rough die cast or
| stamped metal. They were literally just hollow shells of cars
| with axles, in solid color. They were sold loose in a box next to
| the penny candy. These cars were small, 1" to 1.5" long. Tootsie
| Toy, later, really up'd their game. The cars were about twice as
| big as Matchbox/Hot Wheel.
|
| Next were Matchbox, these were the "replicas". They had the
| normal sized cars, but they also had some King Sized, I was
| particularly fascinated by this truck and trailer pipe truck they
| had.
|
| Then, there were Hot Wheels, which were mostly fantasy cars.
| Splittin' Image, Red Baron, the surf board truck, Jack Rabbit
| Special. I swear we had hundreds of feet of Hot Wheels track as a
| kid. And then they brought out the Sizzlers, electric,
| rechargeable cars. Those were a lot of fun. Also there were the
| Hot Wheels Heavyweight and the Chopcycles.
|
| Oh, and I should also mention the Hot Wheel Factory. This was
| back when the toy companies had no compunction selling toys with
| open heating elements to children. Here you melted rubber-ish
| compound into an injection mold system where you'd place bases
| and wheels into the mold and squeeze molten rubbery plastic to
| make your own cars.
|
| At the high end were Corgi, those were really nice. I had a very
| nice ambulance. The cars were hefty. But they were rare, not like
| Matchbox or Hot Wheels.
|
| Trying to compete with Hot Wheels was Johnny Lightning. Known
| mostly for their elaborate race sets. Where Hot Wheels had things
| like the Super Charger (which had a pair of spinning wheels used
| to shoot cars out one end, very useful for loops), Johnny
| Lightning had a conveyor system. Kind of like a marble track,
| with cars.
|
| Dinky had some really nice stuff, but they were very exotic.
| There was a small toy store near where I lived that had not just
| those, but another line that was very detailed construction
| equipment. It was all out of my price range as a kid, though. I
| was definitely wanting Dinky's Thunderbirds models.
| kev009 wrote:
| The quality of toys seemed to be in steep decline after my
| generation. I had a collection of Ertl diecast tractors growing
| up, and the detail was spectacular. Occasionally I have seen the
| toys section in big box stores and it looks like Idiocracy in
| comparison.
| TaurenHunter wrote:
| Related: there is a fun to watch YT channel hyper-specialized in
| diecast car races https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRMUZDVwmC0
| themadturk wrote:
| Back in 1967 or 1968, my grandmother gifted me five or six
| Matchbox cars. As far as I remember, I was the first kid in my
| school to have the, and started off a huge craze among my
| friends. When Hot Wheels were introduced a year or two later, we
| saw them as flashy imitations, and I never had a Hot Wheel in my
| house until my wife started collecting them 30 years later.
|
| One of those original Matchboxes was the bright red Jaguar XKE, a
| car I have never fallen out of love with (and managed to re-
| acquire a few years ago).
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