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Re-Inventing Hotwheels
garzpacho writes "BusinessWeek has an interview with Gary Swisher, Mattel's Vice-President of Wheel Design, who talks about the challenges of designing new toys for today's tech-savvy kids. In addition to discussing 'the challenge of stewarding an old-school brand like HotWheels in our tech-driven age, the emerging technologies that will affect the toy industry, and Mattel's Web strategy,' he also talks about the effect that video games have had on toy design, and argues that exciting the imagination is the most important role that a toy can fill."
Lead paint makes small die cast toys taste good and that will be good for business.
Those uf us who have sampled the intellectual delights of high tech can no longer be fascina...oooh...SHINY..
You had sticks?
When we were kids, we had to attack each other with pieces of fruit! And tigers.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Want to keep today's kids hooked on your retro toys ? Lace em with crack.
:P How hard can it be to put a Sausage McMuffin and two hash browns in a farking bag ? Kids these days.. The only reason they're still alive is because it's illegal to run them over with my car.
I think today's kids needs toys that slap them in the face with a wet noodle and yell "You're a stupid disrespectful worthless excuse for a human being. Cut your hair, go to school, get a job, pay your taxes, go get real friends, quit screwing up my goddamned Drive-thru order."
Back in my day, we had parents to do that. Where did humankind go wrong ?
-Billco, Fnarg.com
You get off my lawn, Andrew Kismet! I know your mother! I'm going to call the police if you kids don't get off my lawn! =)
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
...to do to reel in some insane profits for the 2006 holiday season is to make these following models:
1) Red sports car that looks like kinda like a curvy blend of a Corvette, a GT-40, and a Viper.
2) Blue Porsche 911.
3) Blue Hudson Hornet.
4) Rusty old, hoodless 1955 Chevy tow truck.
5) Blue Roadrunner SuperBird.
6) Green Buick Regal.
And an assortment of other vehicles from you-know-what-movie.
Better put eyes on their windshields too.
Oh boy. You guys waxing nastalgic about the good ol' days back in 1972. Well, I was born back in the early pleolithic around 1958.
Even back then, old people were whining about the toys being so high tech (like requiring batteries), and how kids were no longer able to use their imaginations. Hot Wheels when they first came out were a perfect example of what was wrong with toys! You built a track, and raced them.
"When I was a kid", as people complained back then, "We had big toy trunks that you could actually play with! Not these little tiny cars. Back then, you *pretended* to race them, and that built imagination!" Then, they would go on with some story about walking 9 miles in the snow in uphill both directions every day to school, and having to work in some salt mine and how that built character. In the meantime, I went back playing with my hightech Hotwheels.
Somehow, despite all the high tech toys I played with, I have managed to somehow grow up, avoid becoming a delinquent, and make some contribution to society. However, I worry about my kids. They sit around all day and play with their dang hightech toys. Not like I did in my day. If I wanted a my toys to beep or buzz, I had to do it myself. These kids, they have no imagination.
And, TV only had four channels, and one of those was PBS. And, when we wanted to change channels, we had to get up off the couch, walk all the way to the TV set, and turn a dang knob.
And, we liked it!