The Hot Wheels Design Studio: How a Real Car Gets Turned into a 1:64 Toy | Hacker News Reader

The Hot Wheels Design Studio: How a Real Car Gets Turned into a 1:64 Toy

thedrive.com

For about two years, our oldest son was obsessed with the Cars movie. Over that period, friends and family have overwhelmed our house with die-cast Cars toys, of which there are thousands. We have hundreds. We have many that have no speaking part, and we have some that are not onscreen for more than a few frames. We have over 25 Lightning McQueens.

These Cars cars are junk. They break so easily. The axles are thin, flimsy pieces of metal, the paint jobs are terrible, and they drive smoothly for two weeks before they start stuttering and sliding.

For comparison, we have a few hand-me-down Hot Wheels (edit: Matchbox, not HW) cars made in England in the 70s that have been abused on-and-off for 20 years, and they still roll like they were just made. Newer ones aren't as sturdy or as heavy as those 50-year-old ones, but they're still much more nicely built than the Cars ones.

All I can say is: thank goodness the Cars phase is over.

There's a surprisingly large supply of new old stock hotwheels cars at places like Target, walmart, and CVS. I picked up a few from the early 1980's the other day for $1.29 each or so. I do like that they're on average a little sturdier with more metal.

That said I also have a large supply of 1970's hotwheels and I have to disagree that they're better made, at least in my experience. Most are falling apart and roll poorly due to what I'd call pretty normal play when I was a kid.

The quality of modern hotwheels cars seems to vary pretty wildly by which car series you're buying. I wonder if the "cars" series cars are lower quality than say the color shifters or the circuit legends series (possibly to build in more profit margin for the licensing fees?).

My sense is that the quality of these Cars cars has gone down over time. Our nephews, who got them when the movies came out, have really nice ones that have lasted 10+ years.

The ones we got when our son was watching (2-3 years ago) are decent but still flimsy.

The ones we’ve gotten recently are total trash. Almost 100% plastic. Super light. Awful.

Ah funny. This summer my 5 y.o. nephew was playing with some cars at my parents' house. Then I immediately recognize most of them: I was playing with them when I was his age in the 70s, and they're still going strong :) (some are Matchbox, some Hot Wheels, but most are Majorette).

> The axles are thin, flimsy pieces of metal...

They have to be for the sake of friction. The older cars certainly had very thin axles as well, perhaps the metal was better quality and they were mounted better.

Anyways, as a kid in the 70's, I remember always preferring Matchbox cars. They rolled better than Hot Wheels back in the day.

In my experience the Matchbox cars had thicker axles, but they weren't trying to have the least friction. Hot Wheels were, and they had thinner axles. For better or worse, you could stand on both accidentally without collapsing the body. The incident might warp an axle but they could be bent back if you could get a needle-nose in there. And I had a needle-nose pliers because electronics.

Hot Wheels sold track that would allow construction of simple ramps and loops, and low friction was a well-chosen target under the circumstances. I think Matchbox might have put out a line that was similar, but my peers and I did not buy it.

What was cool about Hot Wheels was the racing story. What was cool about Matchbox was the exotic car story. Ford Cortina! What lucky people owned those! But seriously, I had a Lotus Europa from Matchbox and when I saw one in the real world I was blown away. It seemed capable of turning through 90 degrees on a dime.

Ah. That Lotus Europa. Metallic blue. There has been one in our family tool box since the 70's. Kids ask me why that's there, in between the screwdrivers and sockets, and wire and pliers. "In case of emergencies..."

Counterpoint:

In my household we have about 6 or 7 axle failures. One King, a Cruz, a Sally, a McQueen, and I think something I'm forgetting.

Otherwise on the whole the metal Cars series has been excellent over here. Through the Mack race track thing (since re-sold) and a couple other bang arounds, these look pretty good to me. From floor to sandbox to hosing down, I'm surprised how well these have held up.

Generation 1 was plastic. I get that. Gen 2 - 3 has been pretty decent manufacturing. This Gen 4 has a lot of plastic but the color-change hot/cold water trick is nice for bath time.

Please pardon the pontification, but I'm sorry you haven't enjoyed the Cars universe as much as some others. Also the level of destruction you describe is, uh, probably a different thread. You'd be surprised the resale value on those "thousands" to people who kinda sorta have fun collecting them all.

All I can say is: thank goodness I can stream Herbie movies on Disney+

If you decide to keep all these toy cars you can reuse them when your son is older to play Gaslands.

https://gaslands.com/

Even (and especially!) the broken ones! Really wrecked ones can be painted rust colors and used as scenery to enhance the carnage.

Oh good to hear the Cars phase ends because every Friday when it’s his turn to pick for movie night, our three year old picks Cars 3, no exceptions.

The Cars 3 video game is shockingly decent; I have it on PS4, but it looks like it's on basically everything.

Any clues on why he might like 3 over the first two movies?

I, too, have a three-year-old son. They fixate on stuff arbitrarily. Especially shows. Watching the same one 200+ times.

I think he loves Jackson Storm which is part of it, but mostly as someone else has commented he just attaches himself to stuff.

Current obsessions:

* Anything space related, but especially black holes and the planet Jupiter

* Volcanoes

* Blippi (ugh)

* The song "Message in a Bottle" by The Police (/shrug)

For my son it was all about the Thunder Hollow Breakdown!

That’s unfortunate. “Cars” by Tomica I bought a decade ago for my eldest have survived multiple siblings and cousins just fine.

>a few hand-me-down Hot Wheels made in England in the 70s

That's interesting. I thought they were all Hong Kong or US manufacture. I wonder when that started.

Looking back, the car culture was really something. Not just cartoonish new cars like Superbirds but George Barris models, racing windbreaker jackets, the entire universe of slot cars, cars in songs, on pinball machines, CARtoons magazine, STP stickers, Sting-Ray bicycles, etc.

Shame that it's mostly gone but then the whole industry based around draft-horse farming or treadle sewing machines is largely history too.

Welp I stand corrected. I confused the names — these cars are, in fact, Matchbox cars, which were made in England. And they're awesome.

I don't doubt that a new Hot Wheels car is inferior to one from 1968, but then they cost about a dollar in 1968.

Honestly I don't remember anyone having Matchbox cars. It's the kind of thing you'd own if you wanted a model of a dull green Austin saloon, plus you'd miss out on the whole orange track/racing angle.

I had a blue Lotus Europa from Matchbox, and then I saw one in action and never could think a dull thought of it.

Surprisingly, they still only cost about $1.

I am baffled by website design. I am there to read an article about Hot Wheels. They embed a video about the F-117. Distracting and annoying, but fine. Then, as I scroll more, the video follows me! WTF! No I don’t want to watch your stupid video. I want to read your article. Isn’t that why it’s here?!?

How do you guys use the internet without an ad-blocker?

With uBlock Origin used, I don't see any jet, nor do I have any video at all.

Go to website. See that it doesn't respect the user (auto play video ads that follow you around, or whatever bar you set). Go some place else. There really is no need to give time and attention to sites without a modicum of decency.

I also wouldn't get a punch blocker just so I could visit a bar where the door man punches every guest in the face.

Turning on the reader mode in Vivaldi makes the site actually quite readable. It's kind of sad that bad UX destroys enjoyable content (which this article is).

The Hot Wheels website itself is basically unuseable for me

No stalking videos here (iPhone with 1Blocker). Is your ad blocker disabled or something?

I use Firefox Focus. Maybe it just doesn’t have a rule for thedrive.

From there, the modeler “sculpted” the car using digital clay on a pen-tool carving rig that was originally built as a surgery trainer for doctors in medical school. The tool has motors at each hinge point that allows the pen to offer feedback when “touching” the model. Because of this, it is possible to run the tool along the "surface" of the design and there's resistance offered when sliding across edges or lips.

Anyone have more info about this? It sounds like it isn't necessarily new hardware, but I'm very curious about the software end. Does off the shelf CAD software support those kinds of devices?

It's a haptic pen, like:

https://www.3dsystems.com/haptics

I got to play with one at SIGGRAPH 96 (!) and it was a really cool experience. It really does feel like the tip of the pen is sliding over an invisible surface.

This was interesting, the haptic digital virtual carving thingy especially so.

But my favorite bit about this article was the first related item link - a story about Hot Wheels treadmill racing.

Interesting read. Had no idea it took that long and that many steps to make the actual model for sale or that the scale is not perfect to the original.

More importantly, I regret giving up my collection of hundreds of Hot Wheels to my younger brother in the early 70s. Some of those cars are worth a pretty penny now, but most of all I would like to have them for nostalgia sake.

Fortunately there are now Muscle Machines die cast to scratch that itch.

I want to know more about that pen sculpting tool they're using.

No idea what this one is called, but I've used similar tools. It's like a robot arm in reverse--using inverse kinematics we can put the tip of a universal 5-axis manipulator anywhere in x-y-z space by driving the angle of the axes using motors. These scanner pens work in reverse, reading the angle of the axes to get the tip point in x-y-z space and outputting that x-y-z as a point cloud stream to your CAD program of choice.

I'd like to point out when I was a kid in the 70's, I remember Hot Wheel's cost more than they cost today. This is not even accounting for inflation.

WOW, such an interesting article to read especially for the car lovers like me.

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