What is the history of Hot Wheels?

0:00 Welcome to History's Not Boring by Kidopoly.com. I'm Mira! And I'm Finn. Before we zoom in to today's story, we have some very special shout-outs. A massive hello to Thomas, who is six, from New Zealand and the Czech Republic, and is currently living in Oman.

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0:50 Okay, Mira. Thomas and Carter want to know all about the history of Hot Wheels. So, how many of those tiny metal cars actually exist in the world?

1:00 Well, since they were invented in 1968, the Mattel Toy Company has sold over 8 billion Hot Wheels cars worldwide.

1:10 8 billion? Are you serious? That is roughly equal to the number of people on planet Earth. Exactly!

1:18 If you lined all of those tiny cars up, bumper to bumper, they would circle the Earth about 12 to 15 times. Today, we're zooming back in time to discover how an American toy company set out to build the fastest, coolest toy cars in the world, with special wheels and bright orange tracks that let them fly faster than any toy before.

1:41 Let's travel back to the mid-1960s. Back then, if you wanted a miniature toy car, you probably played with a brand from the United Kingdom called Matchbox. Why were they called Matchbox? Because they were tiny enough to fit perfectly inside a real cardboard matchbox. But there was a major problem. They were perfectly realistic models of everyday cars, like boring delivery vans, slow tractors, or ordinary city buses.

2:12 That doesn't sound very fun to play with.

2:14 Exactly. And the wheels were just solid metal or cheap plastic fixed to stiff metal rods. If you pushed one across the living room carpet, it might roll three or four inches before stopping completely.

2:29 Not very exciting for a race.

2:31 An American toy inventor named Elliot Handler agreed entirely. He was the co-founder of a huge toy company called Mattel. His wife, Ruth Handler, had already invented the world-famous Barbie doll. One day, Elliot watched his son, Kenneth, playing with matchbox cars and thought, we can do better for the boy's toy aisle.

2:55 What did he want to change? He wanted toy cars that looked like the real, super fast California hot rods he saw cruising the streets. Cars with huge, powerful engines sticking out of the hood, wild colours and fiery flames painted on the sides. And most importantly, he wanted them to actually be fast.

3:16 So how did he build them? Elliot knew he couldn't do it alone. So in 1966, he hired a real-life car designer from the General Motors Car Company named Harry Bentley Bradley to make them look incredibly cool. A real car designer? That's serious business. And to make them fast, Elliot hired Jack Ryan. Jack wasn't just a toy maker.

3:42 He went to Yale University and used to be a literal rocket scientist who designed high-tech missiles for an aerospace company. A rocket scientist designing toy cars? That is epic! Jack Ryan looked at the slow, clunky wheels of the old toy cars and used his engineering genius to completely fix the problem.

4:04 He designed a brand new suspension system. What exactly is a suspension system? It's the part that connects the wheels to the body of the car. Instead of thick, heavy rods, Jack used something called piano wire, super strong, flexible steel wire used inside real pianos to act like a springy, bouncy axle.

4:27 So the tiny wheels could bounce and absorb bumps. Exactly! Then he used a special super slippery plastic called Delrin for the wheel bearings, which is the part the wheel spins on. This meant the wheels had almost zero friction.

4:44 So when you push them, they didn't just stop, they just kept going and going.

4:48 Yes. When Elliot Handler saw the very first prototype zip across the floor of his office, legend says he jumped up and shouted, Those are some hot wheels. And the iconic name was born.

5:02 Haha, that is the absolute best name. But did they look as cool as they rolled?

5:08 Oh, they looked incredible. Harry Bentley Bradley designed them to look like customised street racers with huge exhaust pipes and massive rear tyres. But Mattel didn't just paint them with normal, boring toy paint. What did they use to make them stand out? They used a brand new process called Spectra Flame.

5:29 The factory workers polished the tiny metal car bodies until they shone like silver mirrors. Then they sprayed them with clear, brightly coloured paint like candy apple red, anti-freeze green, and deep ocean blue.

5:45 So the shiny metal sparkled right through the clear paint.

5:49 You got it! It looked like a glittering jewel. And every single car had a special thin red stripe painted on the side of its tyres. Today, collectors call these original cars the Red Lines. Finally, on May 18, 1968, Hot Wheels officially launched in retail stores. Mattel introduced 16 original cars to the world after their debut at the New York Toy Fair earlier that year.

6:17 What were they called? They are known today as the Sweet 16. The lineup included real-life muscle cars like the Custom Camaro and the Custom Corvette, plus wild imaginary dream cars, like the Beatnik Bandit, and a futuristic pickup truck called the Diora, which even had two tiny plastic surfboards on the back.

6:39 If I had one of those, I would want to race it immediately. Well, Mattel had thought of that too. They didn't just sell the cars, they invented the iconic bright orange plastic racing track.

6:53 Oh, I love the orange track. It clicks together so perfectly with those little blue connectors.

6:58 Because the track was made of flexible plastic, kids could bend it to go over living room couches, down the stairs, and across the kitchen floor. The cars rolled so perfectly on it that they reached scale speeds of over 300 miles per hour. 300 miles per hour? That's like a Japanese bullet train. But they didn't stop at straight lines.

7:21 Mattel engineers realised the flexible plastic track could be bent into a giant vertical circle to create the very first loop the loop.

7:30 Wait, wouldn't the cars just fall on their heads when they went completely upside down?

7:34 Nope. Because of the super fast, low-friction wheels, the cars built up enough speed to use centrifugal force. They stuck right to the orange plastic all the way around the loop, defying gravity.

7:47 That is the coolest physics experiment ever. Imagine being the first kid to see a toy car do a flip.

7:53 The combination of speed, shiny paint, and orange track was a massive hit. In 1968 alone, Mattel sold a staggering 16 million Hot Wheels. They completely took over the toy aisle. What happened to Matchbox after that? Matchbox had to scramble to catch up. They were forced to totally change their designs, inventing their own low-friction, super fast wheels just to compete.

8:21 The great Diecast Toy Car Wars had officially begun. But Hot Wheels was the undisputed king. So what kind of crazy cars did they make as the years went on? Over the decades, they hired more amazing designers like Larry Wood, who designed wild Hot Wheels for 40 straight years. They made cars shaped like great white sharks, giant hot dogs, and even a menacing black Darth Vader car.

8:50 A Darth Vader car? I bet that one looks incredibly cool speeding down a track. Definitely.

8:57 Today, over 25,000 different models have been created. And some of those tiny vintage cars are worth a shocking amount of money. Like how much? 10 bucks? 100 bucks?

9:10 Try $150,000. No way! For a tiny toy car that fits in your pocket.

9:19 Yes. A rare 1969 prototype called the Pink Rear Loading Beach Bomb is considered the most valuable Hot Wheels in the world. It was a Volkswagen bus with surfboards sticking out the back, and only two pink ones were ever made.

9:36 That's enough money to buy a real, full-sized luxury sports car.

9:40 Exactly! What started in 1968 as a simple idea for a faster toy became a worldwide pop culture sensation that completely changed how kids play forever. Alright Finn, time for the quiz. Are you ready? Okay, I'm ready. First question. What year did Hot Wheels officially launch? Next one, what is the name of the slippery plastic Jack Ryan used to make the wheels spin so fast?

10:14 Question 3. What was the original lineup of 16 cars called? Here's number four. What colour was the iconic flexible plastic racing track? Last question. How many Hot Wheels cars have been sold since they were invented? Great job! Let's see how you did. The first answer is, Hot Wheels launched in 1968.

10:47 For question two, the slippery plastic was called Delrin. Number three, the answer is the original lineup was called the Sweet 16. Question 4. The racing track was bright orange. And the final answer is, Mattel has sold over 8 billion Hot Wheels cars.

11:06 8 billion is still just blowing my mind. It makes me want to go dig through my toy box right now and set up an orange loop the loop. Me too. Those rocket science wheels really made history. Hey listeners, if you love zooming through history with us, please leave a five-star review.

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11:53 Bye everyone!