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| One of the highlights of my Hot Wheels collecting experience was the opportunity to meet and interview Larry Wood. Larry Wood has been designing Hot Wheels for 30 years. He has probably designed more cars than anyone. So his perspective of the diecast world is unequaled and valuable to us. I wanted to ask the questions no one seems to ask. Redline questions! |
| My special thanks go to Bruce Schultz, who introduced the idea to Larry, and to The Redline Guys, who contributed possible questions for the interview. Sergio Jimenez handled the photography (thanks, Sergio) and I tried to look like an interviewer! Not only did I find Larry to be a very cool guy, unpretentious and casual, but he also went out of his way to bring in some very rare prototypes for us to shoot photos of, as well as some of the killer new cars that are about to hit! Thanks, Larry, the collectors out there appreciate it! |
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| Dave: What was the main reason you decided to start working at Mattel? |
| Larry Wood: I came to get a job in California and I worked at Lockheed Aircraft for awhile doing interiors for the L-10-11 airplane and, of course, I had just left Ford so I was still looking for a job that had something to do with cars. I went to a party and a friend of mine did Hot Wheels and I had never seen them before 'cause my kids were too young and his kids were playing with them and I said to him, "Hey, do you like your job?" and he said, "No, I want to work on Matt Mason, I want to do male action toys instead of cars". So I said, "Hey, I'll do the car stuff". So he went to work and talked to his boss and said, "I want to move on and do toy stuff", so they interviewed me and I got the job. |
| Dave: Wow! |
| Larry Wood: It was a very good party for me! |
| Dave: Was it that easy to get the job then? |
| Larry Wood: Well, back then, you could imagine, there was only, like, one person working on Hot Wheels - it was no big deal - it had just barely started, it hadn't hit really heavy. I got here in '68 and it really got going right after that. |
| Dave: How much freedom did Mattel give you in designing cars when you first got started? |
| Larry Wood: When I first got started it was very free - you could basically decide, "Hey, I like this kind of car, and I want to do something like that". And you'd show the boss and that would be it and it would be up to you to do the rest. Now, it has to go through so many committees and everything that it has a lot to do with other people's inputs rather than just one person. It's a big company now, making a lot of money. |
| Dave: What types of different decisions do they have now that they didn't have then? |
| Larry Wood: Well, we have things like: you have to go to your boss and then go to the Marketing boss and then it goes to the Company President, you know, all the way down the line, each person has to OK it. So it's a lot different than somebody getting an idea of a car and doing it. Of course, now with Legal, you have to have permission to do the car, you have to pay money to do the car, the graphics on the car have to be approved by everybody. Where in the old days, anyone of these, we just did 'em. Nobody ever said anything - yeah, big change. |
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| Dave: Were you influenced at all by Ed Roth, George Barris and the whole Custom Hot Rod culture? |
| Larry Wood: Friends of mine worked for Ed Roth at the very beginning (some of my best friends) and I knew Ed - I still know him, I talk to him quite a bit. George Barris, I used to go out and see his cars and everything. The main thing for me was magazines, 'cause I lived back East and there were no car shows or anything so I used to always read Rod & Custom Magazine or Hot Rod Magazine and that's where it all came from. And, of course, that's where Ed Roth and all those guys were - in the magazines - so, yeah it all started from that. |
| Dave: Were the numbers of Hot Wheels produced in the first few years pretty equal among models? |
| Larry Wood: Again, as soon as it was in production, I didn't have to worry about it. I just made the design up to that point, so I don't know - they were technically supposed to be equal - there should be as many pink cars as there are blue cars as there are green cars, but production doesn't work that way. You know, if they're runnin' down the line and they only have 1000 cars left and somebody says it has to be blue, you'll get 1000 blue cars instead of the pink cars. So that's probably how it happened. |
| Dave: Is there a reason that, 30 years later, certain cars in certain colors are extremely difficult to find? For example: The Evil Weevil in Magenta is almost impossible to find, there are very few known to exist! What caused this disparity in production of certain car/color combinations? |
| Larry Wood: Perfect example - probably Evil Weevils are coming down the line, when it came to Magenta, they probably ran a few and the quota was done and they switched to another car because, technically, the person on the assembly line doesn't even know what car it is. They're just rackin' them on a rack. |
| Dave: Right... |
| Larry Wood: So if the production line stops at a certain car and the next car comes down, they just rack 'em and that's why you see even cars today will be in the wrong color once in a while. |
| Dave: Alternate colors? |
| Larry Wood: Yeah, exactly. |
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| Prototypes: Black enamel Camaro, Resin-cast Sugar Caddy, Resin-cast Twinmill with cut-out rear fenders! |
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| Dave: Can you describe the Spectraflame Paint process and how it came about? |
| Larry Wood: I can remember working on it and it was like a tumbling process, we tumbled the body in some polish stones so it took off all the rough edges and polished the body. And then, Spectraflame was a paint process that we came up with and basically, you're looking through to see the diecast. That's why older ones start getting spots in them or something happens to them because the diecast underneath is starting to corrode. That's what probably happens, you're looking through it, like a candy paint. You're looking through the paint. |
| Dave: Is there a reason it seems to happen more with Hong Kong Redlines than with U.S. Redlines? |
| Larry Wood: In Hong Kong, the humidity is so high, that you could imagine, some of these would already start to corrode if they sat around. Maybe the production didn't get painted right away, they sat around in a basket or something, maybe they got a little moisture on them and then when they painted them, years later it would start... |
| Dave: To show up? |
| Larry Wood: Going out from underneath there, yeah. |
| Dave: Is Zamac that sensitive a material? |
| Larry Wood: No matter what, they're gonna corrode. If you leave a raw car out, you've seen them (Zamacs). Even our raw cars are usually cleared, at least that'll keep them from going. |
| Dave: Considering the current prices of original Redlines, has Mattel considered re-issuing the Rear-Loaded Beach Bomb? |
| Larry Wood: You know, I think it's come up a couple of times...personally I'd like not to see it happen. There should be a vehicle that is "sacred" and as far as I'm concerned, that should be the one. That's the ultimate - if you can find it - that's wonderful and everybody goes, "Wow"! And every once in awhile you hear a story: a guy told me recently that he bought one here in Hawthorne for 25 cents at the swap meet - perfect condition - Rear Beach Bomb. So, that's the kind of stories that are great and I'd rather not see us do them. I personally was never for the reproductions anyway. I like the originals, that way, if you've got an original, you've got something special. |
| Dave: Right! |
| (continued>) |
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