Hot Wheels Quality Control (Or Lack Thereof)

Here's the deal: you go to the store and you're looking forward to finding some cars, especially the ones that you wanted for a while but you don't have in your collection yet. You glance over them for a bit, go to checkout, and leave. By the time you get home and bust your car out the package, you find some flaws. A paint chip (or two) here, a scratched window there, and some tampos that are a bit off-center. You don't wanna admit it, but you are kinda bummed out. If you had some intentions on customizing it, that's different. You're just going to strip it anyway. But if you had intentions on leaving it stock, then you would feel like screaming in disgust.

Now you could say, nobody's perfect; factory flaws are inevitable. That might be true, but in the last ten years or so, Hot Wheels just doesn't give a fuck anymore. At least on their basic mainline items. You could also argue, why care so much about the quality control on little toy cars that are only made to cost one dollar? That's a pretty lame excuse, because when I was a kid, the cars had way better quality control back then, even on the mainlines. Very rarely did you find a car that had some flaws on it. Of course, Hot Wheels didn't make as many cars back then as they do now, but I still think that good standards are still doable. That only leaves one more thing left to explain: the factories.

Mattel has certain factories for different product lines within their vehicle brands. They make the Hot Wheels mainlines in the Malaysia plants, and make the higher-budget Hot Wheels premium cars in the Thailand plants, at least mostly. And as you can imagine, the Thailand cars usually have a higher degree of quality. If they cost around $3-$5 dollars, they better. And although Matchbox doesn't have the output of Hot Wheels, you can tell the fit and finish on the Matchbox cars are way, way crisper. Malaysia, on the other hand, is garbage. Of course, they are the cheap cars so quite naturally, they have the most flaws I have ever had, and it ain't even funny. Seriously. I'm not gonna sit here and say I know everything that goes on in those factories, but it seems like everything there goes out the door unchecked. Even the China plants are trash, because I had more than one car from the Red Line Club that had flea bites on them, and you pay a shit ton of cash for those memberships too. Highway robbery indeed.

And that little "Guaranteed For Life" warranty they put on their cars? It's bullshit. That's just to cover their asses so they can stay cheap and lazy.

In all fairness, I do understand how it is to work on an assembly line; I've been on one myself, so I can imagine how it is to make thousands of little toy cars a day. It truly is boring, monotonous work. So you try to get it over with as fast as you can. However, when you bring home some flawed cars after a long day of hunting, it feels like you trick-or-treated all night long and found some fucked up candy from your bag. So bad, you have no choice but to throw it away. Shows that you really can't win for losing. 

Damn.

Treasure Hunts and Premium Releases: Out of Control

When Hot Wheels first came out with their Treasure Hunts, and as of late, the premium sets such as Entertainment and Car Culture series, it added a new dimension to the hobby. Because they had Real Rider wheels and special paint jobs, they had many collectors searching for every inch of the earth for these cars, particularly when the Treasure Hunts eventually evolved into Super Treasure Hunts. It was innocent enough, until scalpers started selling them. Nothing wrong with making money, but it's also the way they are doing it. Not only are they charging obnoxious prices for them, but it is also the unscrupulous tactics in how they get these cars in the first place. And if you ask me, it has damaged the hobby for a lot of collectors, to the point where some have renounced the hobby altogether.

First off, some of these guys are really rude just by going into the stores and trashing everything that was neatly stocked. Then they disrespect the employees by bothering them about the cars that are in the cases, mostly without permission, and not even approaching the workers with common courtesy. Now those workers are pissed, and you give other collectors a bad name. They will buy every sought-after model that is there so they can sell them online. Nothing you can do about that, but the worst thing is when some of these dudes make deals in the stockroom with some workers they already know, and the product gets sold without even reaching the floor for anybody else. It leaves a bad taste in the mouth of all parties involved, except for the scalpers. I used to work at Walmart, but I wasn't collecting back then. But if I was, I would be snitching so much nobody would like me. I even heard stories about guys bumping kids out of the way so they can get to the good stuff first. And to think, these are grown ass men behaving this way over toy cars.

But I don't see Mattel, or these stores like Walmart or Target doing anything about it. Why would they, since they are making profits?  And you could also argue, why blame the folks that are hoarding and reselling these cars for extra money, like any other collector's items? Sure, you can't just go up to some guy and tell him to not buy out the whole lot of Supers and Fast and Furious Skylines. But just because you can buy as many as you want, don't mean that you really should. Besides, how many do you really need? And I refuse to pay $20-$30 on something that I could have bought at my local store for around $3-$5 bucks. Especially if it was a mass-produced item to begin with. And do not give me that "supply-and-demand,-collectors-don't-want-anything-that's-readily-available" lecture. That's bullshit. If you have to always run around collecting stuff that way, then more power to you. But I'm not a sheep though.

You know, I'm not even that into hunts anyway. I just only buy what I like. But that doesn't mean I have to give in to the rat race to get what I want.

The First Post

I honestly don't know why I decided to create a blog, but I did. Especially since I really don't expect for anybody to read it, or care. I guess I just wanted to vent my frustrations about the diecast industry someway, somehow. It's really more of a personal diary, just one that is made for the world to see.

I am not a guy who is looking for fame; I usually try to stay low key. But, here I am, someway, somehow.