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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."
Just as long as they remember that you don't always need technology to excite the imagination we may actually see something new and innovative out there.
Lego bricks anyone?
Lead paint makes small die cast toys taste good and that will be good for business.
They don't need to reinvent themselves because they are perfect as they are.
My youngest is a clutcher and takes a car with him to school every day.
Most days he doesn't come back with one, or if he does still have one, you can bet it wasn't the one he took.
liqbase
Thank god someone making these toys sees that. Shoving loads of useless, yet focus-grabbing information in front of a kids face is going to destroy that child's ability to actually create. Imagination should be nurtured, and the only way to do that is to force these kids to find a way to pre-occupy their own minds. My hat's off to you, Mattel.
What the hell's a "gewie?"
I think it is possible that all this technology is actually going to make toys shittier. What was great about being a kid is you could have something very simple and make it fun with your imagination... I remember when a towel was a cape, and a plastic sword made me HeMan "I HAVE THE POWER!".
The problem with technology is that it makes it easy to complicate things to a point where you can't take the toy in the direction your imagination wants to go. I used to love action figures that were plain, and could move in all directions, simply because I could use them to do anything... I even had GI Joe Football games.
Seems like technology should be used in CREATING toys, not actually in the toys themselves. I don't need action figures or wrestling buddies with voices and changing facial expressions, what if i want the toy doll to be my hated enemy who I must fight in a steel cage match? Nothing worse than dropping bows from the top rope only to hear some stupid voice say "I am hulk hogan, eat your vitamins!".
Of course kids are losing a lot of the fun toys because of the tendency to pull toys from the market that focus on violence. How else are kids going to get rid of the evil guys? Diplomacy? Bullshit, our government can't even get that to work.
You take it, I don't want it...
Back In The Day(tm) you bought Hot Wheels and it was up to you to determine what they did. Could you make a track that would make them do a loop? Make it all the way down into the basement without jumping the track? And along the way you learned a lot about how the world worked. Notice how the car can never get higher than its starting point without a push? When I read about potential and kinetic energy in high school first thing I thought was "Aha! The Hot Wheels problem! I've seen this before."
But nowadays (opposite of BITD, see above) the sets only do one thing. The idea is to maximize revenue. A kid gets hooked on Hot Wheels and they buy set A. They do everything set A can do, then they have to buy set B. And of course, sets A and B are not compatible.
And that's what is wrong with todays sets. No room to grow with them. Of course they get boring quick - that's part of the revenue model. They're designed not to hold your interest very long - you can only do one thing per set. Don't confuse poor toy design with ADHD or video game addiction. You are making a more boring product these days. Your revenue-maximizing model you've fallen in love with is the broken part. Go back to making general sets as well as your special kits and you'll see interest in Hot Wheels perk back up I'll bet.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
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!
When my 3 year old threw a tantrum because the toy I bought him didn't make any noises I vowed to start buying him more "manual" toys. The big issue nowadays with kids toys is that the kid doesn't need to play with them. They press a button, it does something cool and they sit and watch it. Yuck.
When I was a kid, such toys where very expensive and a treat you only got at christmas (that Millenium Falcon ruled!. Of course, now you can pick them up at [something]-Mart for a couple of dollars.
Since encouraging my own children to play with more traditional toys (cars, lego, etc.) I've seen their imaginations improve and less cries of "I'm bored!".