... you can talk about whatever you want.
The image comes from the Hot Wheels Wiki page. It's the Custom Barracuda, one of the Original 16 Hot Wheels that were released on January 4, 1968, 50 years ago today:
Hot Wheels were conceived to be more like "tricked out" cars, as compared to Matchbox cars which were more city or "real life" cars. There were sixteen castings released in 1968, eleven of them designed by Harry Bentley Bradley.....This is an open thread, though. You don't have to talk about your toys.
And consider shopping Amazon through the Althouse Portal, where among the many things you can buy, there are Hot Wheels.
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51 comments:
I played with those toy cars as a kid. When my kids were younger, we could still but them for about $.50, and they were often used as bribes. More by me than my wife, who has better sense. Mostly.
Hot Wheels always were a lot of fun. I was born too long ago to have played with them as a youth, but my sons enjoyed them and micro-machines.
Jeez. Why would anyone release a new toy on January 4th? Everything in my industry (not toys) is focused around getting the product out before Christmas. A 2 week delay can make the difference between profit and loss for the whole company. This must have been a major screw-up at Mattel.
The late 60's was the muscle car era. Chrysler had some serious engines.
Considering selling the toy shown in my avatar this spring. Haven't driven it much the few years. Like to build another.
My very first Hot Wheels was a blue beatnik bandit from the Shell station my dad threw on the car seat at me. I recall it was bathed in shafts of lights from the heavens. There were a hundreds more to follow over the years. Matchboxes, Road King Mountain Mining, several sets of track.
Now I only have one: a blue beatnik bandit in mint condition.
12/26/17, 1:10 PM
Ficta said...
Speaking of Amazon Originals: I absolutely loved Patriot, but, apart from only a couple of TV critics, I'm not sure anyone else did. It's very dark and very funny, and beautifully photographed and very.. unusual.
--
I agree....I'm nearing end of season 1.
Ah, the Beatnik Bikini. Weird the useless crap that memory will store for almost 50 years. We're either under or over-evolved. What if humanity misses the sweet spot altogether? Is that possible?
Holy shit, was it the Beatnik Bandit? Clearly, I missed the sweet spot.
Loved Patriot. That is some exceptional TV writing.
Oh man, the Beatnik Bandit. I bugged my aunt mercilessly for that. It cost $1.50 or so. Nowadays they sell Hot Wheels at Walgreens for a buck. Remember Johnny Lightning? I had neighbors who swore up and down that JL was superior. I knew better.
@Patrick — bribery is an excellent child-rearing technique — so much better than yelling or punishment or shame or authoritarianism. Just be careful as they get older that you don't offer, say, a real car for, say, getting themselves on the dean's list every semester for 4 years straight. Still, even if you have to cough up a Toyota, it's more effective than telling them — hey, straight A's or I'll beat the tar out of you.
My Mom worked at that factory shortly after it opened while my Dad was on a tour in Vietnam. She used to bring home free cars all the time. The problem was...none of their wheels were straight...they were rejects from the production line.
One of the cars is a Hot Heap. Definitely not a nonheap.
Oh I loooved me some Hot Wheels® in the late 1960s. SuperChargers, track, loops, all the accessories
The only TV series I ever watched was "Northern Exposure, " which my office staff convinced me to watch. As soon as i got into it started to get weird, but it was still pretty good.
It was set in a little town in Talkeetna but was filmed in Washington state.
I have always liked Alaska and have an Alaska medical license but never lived there,
I did come close to buying a house near Homer, one of my favorite places. We were up there in September 2016.
I had a few of the cars, but really all you could do was roll them around some, and that wasn't really much fun. However I *really* liked the "Hotwheels" Saturday morning cartoon. I watched all of those. The one I remember is an experimental engine with something called the "M-Head" was stolen and put in a rival racer before the team had finished perfecting it. Somehow this resulted in the driver-thief being unable to turn th engine off, and the Hot Wheels team had to send out their own car, get in front of the car with the stolen M-Head and gently brake into a controlled rear-end collision and then use their brakes to stop both cars.
"Hotwheels" ran back to back with "Skyhawks", which I also loved, and which had a theme song by the future Lt. Gov of California.
I had most of those back in that era. We liked the odd-looking ones like the Beatnik Bandit, the Silhouette and the Python from '68. I know that I also had the Deora, the Hot Heap, the Cougar, the Eldorado, the Mustang, the Corvette and the T-bird. I wouldn't swear to the rest. From '69, I know I had the '31 Ford Woody, the '32 Ford Vicky and the '36 Ford Coupe, as well as the Splittin' Image. From '70, I know I had the Classic Nomad, the Demon, the Paddy Wagon, the Red Baron, the Sand Crab and both the Snake and the Mongoose. My favorite was the '71 Evil Weevil.
And oh yeah, I had the orange track that you clicked together with the magenta connectors, and I eventually got the supercharger that would send the cars shooting down the track.
New FBI investigation of Clinton email fiasco. Peter Strzok to head up inquiry..
Ah, Clinton. The Beat Rap Bandit.
"My Mom worked at that factory shortly after it opened while my Dad was on a tour in Vietnam. She used to bring home free cars all the time. The problem was...none of their wheels were straight...they were rejects from the production line."
That comment is like a really, really condensed episode of Black Mirror, Outer Limits, etc. It starts out for us like "Man, what a dream!" but ends with a real bummer.
I see that Leigh Corfman has filed a defamation lawsuit against Roy Moore. Now maybe we can find out whether she was lying.
We were at my parents house over Christmas, and my dad brought out a box of old hot wheels. Including some he must have gotten from a garage sale or from a friend. Can we open this one? one of my kids asked. Old hot wheel in its original box. The box wasn't in great condition, so I said okay.
It was that Ford J-Car shown in the Sweet Sixteen list. The car itself was in perfect condition, having been in the package and all for the last 50 years.
Hot Wheels are literally white supremacy.
On wheels.
"New FBI investigation of Clinton email fiasco."...
...discovers that the e-mails are still destroyed.
Meryl Streep does a "But Truuuuuummmpppp!"
The self-confidence of releasing a toy a couple weeks after Christmas! I like it!
HotWheels were a horrible toy though. They had to be pushed. Cars should not need to be pushed. Complete fail. I always figured that HotWheels were invented to teach us young people that other young people were not all that bright, and would clearly fall for cheap subterfuge.
That being said, I always thought of them as not incompletely interesting for the weird color schemes, if for nothing else There was one car that was almost but not quite metallic orange, unlike the Mitsubishi Zeroes from the big model plane company that were unapologetically metallic blue.
Actually the orange car I am thinking of was probably Matchbox. There is no way to know now, colors do not remain stable over 50 years.
"Hot Wheels were conceived to be more like "tricked out" cars, as compared to Matchbox cars which were more city or 'real life' cars."
This is still the case.
I was a Matchbox™ man. My collection, beat to hell, is still stashed in my treasure chest out in the garage. By the time Hot Wheels™ came out I was 14, and a little past the toy car stage so I was mildly contemptuous of them but, man, I secretly admired how bitchen they rolled.
I attribute the commercial success of Hot Wheels to the parents who quickly realized they were the perfect tool for domesticating young boys of that period -- the kind still used to playing outside.
Think about it.
We would do anything to please our parents in order to get a new Hot Wheels car.
But even after we got the car, and before we could reasonably start to beg for another, they had a quiver of 18" of yellow-orange plastic straps handy.
A win-win for parents!
Less obvious and way more fun for the kids than the dreaded "Paddle Ball" with the flimsy stapled elastic attaching ball to paddle together.
But the Hot Wheel track stung more.
"Hot Wheels were conceived to be more like "tricked out" cars, as compared to Matchbox cars which were more city or 'real life' cars.
IOW, dudes w/ wee cocks invented Hot Wheels.
Sad!
The "you have to push them" problem did have a solution: Hot Wheels Sizzlers. Electric cars with a recharge "Juice Machine" that looked like a gas pump:
https://hotwheelsracetracks.wordpress.com/tag/juice-machine/
'He's lost it': Bannon thought 'mentally unfit' Trump could have been removed from office via the 25th amendment after he refused to blame white supremacists for Charlottesville violence
Bannon and me, both.
Well ARM,
this is the Althouse blog, so because of blah blah blah blah and so on, it doesn't matter that DJT is a gross, racist, liar conman.
Anywho, let's have some more "Obama's in trouble" tags. Seems like it's been a few days since the last of those. = overdue.
loons are as loons do.
Carry on.
I think I had this car. The hood lifts up, right?
AReasonableMan said...
'He's lost it': Bannon thought 'mentally unfit' Trump could have been removed from office via the 25th amendment after he refused to blame white supremacists for Charlottesville violence
Bannon and me, both.
Uncanny Trump was correct: Didn't the independent review basically place fault with Charlottesville officials?
EDH,
You included the wrong link. You meant to prove that DJT's comment re very fine people was accurate.
To that end, where's your link that says that some folks who went to a town that wasn't their town so that they could protest other people's democratically determined decision -- keep in mind that these bussed-in protestors marched among torch carriers (incl one who decided to run over and kill a woman) chanting "Jews will not replace us" -- were very fine people?
EDH said...
Uncanny Trump was correct: Didn't the independent review basically place fault with Charlottesville officials?
This is why Trump still has 30% support but also why he will never have any more.
You don't have to talk about your toys.
I can if I wanna!
The trolls today seem directorless.
Sea changes ahead.
Priestap.
Mueller.
&etc
Heh.
We now see the reason Glenn Simpson wrote that op-ed the other day- his request for an injunction against Congress obtaining GPSFusion's banking records was denied yesterday.
Follow the money.
This is why Trump still has 30% support but also why he will never have any more.
What are the numbers for Congress or the MSM?
There is a YouTube channel for restoring Hot Wheels!
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnsnjDFdtULQ4ILpABYb9UQ
Read this you leftist liberals and never trumps.
"He is a creative and master fighter, as we see in the his effective use of tweets and branding to encourage his supporters and sow confusion among the enemy.
Trump is characteristically unsuited to kowtow to the Deep State or to follow its methods. He does not flout the law in darkness, like the underhanded Barack Obama. Obama's DOJ and EPA created secret and illegal slush funds. The Democrat DOJ blackmailed the industries it was regulating in order to provide half a billion dollars to left-wing groups. The EPA used phony sue-and-settle tactics to hand undemocratic power to privileged leftist groups.
In sharp contrast, Trump is not a sneak. He respects the rule of law. He honors the presidency. He is open and forthright. His administration has turned the DOJ and EPA back to following the laws as written."
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/01/note_to_nevertrumps_trumps_character_is_admirable.html#ixzz53J0xtoqc
k
And this.
"Trump honestly addressing the problem of illegals invading our country sparked a fake news media firestorm against him. Fake news media launched a bogus storyline that Trump is a racist who hates all Mexicans. In their usual fearful submission to fake news media, conservatives and Republicans ran to microphones to condemn and distance themselves from what fake news media decreed to be Trump's "racist" remarks.
However, a majority of American voters did not buy fake news media's bogus Trump-is-racist narrative. Quite the opposite. We the People were elated by Trump's unprecedented lack of fear of fake news media. Trump remained steadfast in speaking truth, exposing the negative impact of illegals invading our country with no desire to assimilate. Trump boldly disobeying fake news media's ban on speaking truth inspires all Americans to begin speaking truth again."
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/01/trumps_unnoticed_great_firstyear_accomplishment.html#ixzz53J5dWkKm
If you go to the Hot Wheels Wiki page I linked to, the Beatnik Bandit is the first picture, right before the one I chose, the Barracuda. Just alphabetical order, but you can see a nice picture of the remembered toy, if you click.
WSJ web front page. You might conclude that you don't care about women moving up.
If You Want Women to Move Up, You Have to Accommodate Mothers
By Rebecca Johnson
Working moms need more flexibility, and they want recognition of their commitment and abilities.
Had many of these.but MY first ever CAR was a 67 Barracuda.Hot Wheels was sorta Pinterest in steel and plastic.You know Tangible.
I never cared about cars. Only airplanes, as a kid.
"AReasonableMan said...
This is why Trump still has 30% support but also why he will never have any more."
He's at 40%, but join these geniuses. Meanwhile we will bask in the winning.
Blogger anti-de Sitter space said...
"Well ARM,
this is the Althouse blog, so because of blah blah blah blah and so on, it doesn't matter that DJT is a gross, racist, liar conman."
What, of yours, has he stolen? What whoppers has he told you? Basically all I'm getting from you is that Trump is .......icky.
Okay. We won't get into Obama's fascist behavior.
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