Retirement of a special guy - The Passion in us all Collectors ~ Mr L.W.

[Rayz-HWC 0]

Yes....it's Larry Wood, the Man himself aka 'Mr Hot Wheels'....here's a little article written and posted @ HWC.com. Quite a nice read and about the man himself and his collection, career and life.
ps* I had to cut the article into 3 different post in the same thread - too big


Hot Wheels Designer Larry Wood Announces Retirement
“Mr. Hot Wheels” Bids Farewell To Mattel

by HWC Gary
03-27-09

The year was 1969, the year of the first lunar landing by Apollo 11. The president of the United States was Richard M. Nixon, and the nation was involved in a military conflict in Viet Nam. The median household income was just over $8,000 per year. It was the year of Woodstock, and the Beatles were still together. The New York Jets won the Super Bowl that year, and the New York Mets won the World Series. Popular television shows included Gunsmoke and Bonanza, and Sesame Street would launch that year. Among the items which did not yet exist in homes were the microwave oven, the VCR or DVD player, compact discs, video games, cell phones, digital cameras, the PC, and there was no World Wide Web.

And at Mattel, Inc., a promising young designer would begin working on the successful new Hot Wheels line of die-cast cars. He would go on to design more unique vehicles than probably any other person in the world, earning him the nickname “Mr. Hot Wheels.”

Change is one thing you can count on and, forty years after he began his unparalleled run designing miniature toy cars, long-time Hot Wheels designer Larry Wood has decided it is time for a change. At the 2009 9th Annual Hot Wheels Collectors Nationals in Reston, Virginia, Larry Wood quietly announced to the public his intention to retire.


With his retirement announcement still pending at the time, I recently caught up with Larry at his garage/workshop in Long Beach, CA to ask him about his Hot Wheels legacy, what plans he might have for the future, and how the blazes had he managed not to burn out over that forty-year run.


HWC Gary: Has your official last day on staff already gone by now?
Larry Wood: Yeah, basically the first of the year so I could say I worked there forty years. It worked out for the company and myself that that was the best timing for it. I’m available as a consultant. I’m still doing cars. I’m still doing interviews, and I’m still doing conventions. So I’ll be around a couple more years as a consultant.

HWC Gary: So you’re not at the office anymore. You’re gonna be working here in your shop, mostly doing real things?
Larry Wood: I’ll be in the shop most of time, yeah. The C.O.E. is done; I’ve got the trailer to work on. You always have things to do. In fact, everybody has told me that -- when you’re retired -- you’re busier than when you were working. I always said I didn’t see how that could happen, because eight hours a day, you’re at work. I gotta tell ya -- it’s only been two months, but I haven’t had an hour off. I have been doing things -- probably things you wanted to do, but you’d only do for a few hours on weekends that you could now do for a day. It’s not always work on cars… it’s work around the house, or maintenance on family cars, or going on a trip… You never even think about it until you’ve actually got the time. I thought I’d be not knowing what to do with myself, but I’ve been so busy. It’s been great.

I do go to work a couple times a week for a while. I do have a couple cars in the system, so I have to go in and make sure that they’re coming along. Some of the first shots are coming in on some of the cars that I did last year, so I gotta check on that. It’s perfect, ‘cause I’m just kinda easing my way out.

HWC Gary: Still not burned out, huh?
Larry Wood: Nah, it’s too much fun. The best thing now is I can work down at my garage, work on real cars, go and do trips, and things like that, and still get some time at work to do a couple cars a year. It’s another phase of the job.

HWC Gary: How do you not burn out in forty years?
Larry Wood: Actually, that’s fairly easy, because I like to draw cars. I probably have drawn as many cars at home for a hobby as I have at work. I could do this forever. Drawing cars is what I like to do, and getting ideas, and then seeing the car in actual die-cast is the pleasure. That’s the easy part. The meetings and things like that? That’s a different story.

HWC Gary: So would your last staff car be the Tri Baby Too?
Larry Wood: Yeah. The first car I ever did was the Tri Baby, so we thought maybe the last car I ever did as a designer at Mattel would be the Tri Baby Too. We’ve got that in the system now. There will be cars after that, but I’ll be more of a consultant from that point on. Larry’s Garage is gonna continue, and I’ll be at conventions and doing some other things, so there’ll be quite a bit more. It does take us roughly a year to build a car, so some of the cars that come out from the first of the year, toward the end of the year -- or even into the year after -- will be after I’m officially gone.

HWC Gary: It’s been said that you’ve probably designed more cars than any other car designer.
Larry Wood: That will probably be something I’ll have to do when I’m retired and I have a day when I’m not doing something -- which doesn’t seem to be happening yet. To sit down and figure out how many castings I did. It would be fun to know. I’ve been asked that before, so it’ll be one of those things I can add up and figure out. You’d never be able to figure out how many were made from each one, but if you’re talking products made through the years… I would tend to think nobody else is close. Obviously, the guys who came in after me are making plenty of cars, and they’re going to catch up to me sooner or later. But as of now… that 15 years when I was there by myself kind of put me ahead of everybody.

HWC Gary: Is there any one thing that stands out in your mind as a high point?
Larry Wood: I think the high point for me was when they decided that there was a collector line. We got to do the Legends To Life Snake Funny Car, and we got to do some of the 1:18 and 1:24 scales that were really detailed, and then the 100% line that had all of the nice detail… That got from doing toys to actually doing small cars. That was probably the best part of the job through the years -- getting to do the cars the way I always wanted to do them, without the cost restriction of a dollar car.

HWC Gary: You had a lot to do with that, too, didn’t you? You helped them recognize that there was a collector market?
Larry Wood: Yeah, with Mike Strauss through the years. In fact, when Mike first called me up and said, “I wanna do a book on collectors,” there was no such thing as collectors. I thought if we could start this, maybe there will be a collector line someday. It started small, and then it got to the point where we could actually sell (directly) to collectors, rather than them just buying old cars. And of course, it’s exploded…look at what it is now.

What a difference from sitting there by myself, just doing six cars a year, to now, with the internet and the digital cars we make and the collector line and basic cars… Of course, Hot Wheels goes into all sorts of toy stuff, too. It’s not just a little car and a set anymore. I never thought that Hot Wheels would be one of the major parts of Mattel, but it has come from not even paying Barbie’s taxes to being one of the top parts of the company.

~End Of Part 1~

[Rayz-HWC 0]

HWC Gary: Do you have any low points during your forty years there?
Larry Wood: Oh, yeah. Obviously, when Mattel was in trouble in the (early) ’70s, that was pretty bad. Basically, 80 percent of the people were gone, and I was there by myself. Hot Wheels went down pretty low, and I thought that was the end of it. That was one of the few times I went out and did some interviews, looking for another job.

And there were a few bosses through the years that I didn’t get along with -- but that’s part of the job. That’s one thing about Mattel -- you wait long enough, and things are going to change.

HWC Gary: We’ve seen a lot of changes in the working world over forty years…
Larry Wood: If somebody wanted to talk to you, there was no answering machine, there was no e-mail… And, of course, I didn’t have a secretary, so if somebody wanted to talk to me, they actually had to come over to my office and walk in and talk to me. (We had) no computers, no faxes, no cell phones, no regular phones, no answering machine. It’s a little different now… You get the e-mails, you get the phone messages, you get the secretary notes…

HWC Gary: And you did everything by hand…
Larry Wood: Everything was done by hand. The models were hand-carved in the model shop.

When I first got there, I could actually walk to the factory and back and see the cars being built. That was only for a few months, then they went to Hong Kong. It’s funny because, at the time, it didn’t mean anything to me. I just went back, and there were toys being made; I’d go up to my office, and that was it. Now I wish I could have gone back there and just looked at all these Redlines coming off the assembly line… where were they gonna end up someday? You know the stories of those guys finding the buses (the original Beach Bomb)… They were owned by janitors and executives… The rear-loader didn’t go into production, so it ended up in a desk. The guys found them from janitors and people like that who weren’t supposed to have them, but nobody cared about them. “This isn’t gonna go into production -- do you want one of ‘em?” The stuff was just laying around.

I remember during the ’70s -- when I was basically the only guy there -- I set a track up that went all the way around the offices, and I put Super Chargers all the way around. A car would disappear for like 10 minutes… you could hear it hitting the Super Chargers as the car went around. You could be in your office, and the car would go by -- no big deal.

When (Bob) Lovejoy and (Paul) Tam were working there, our offices were together. We had a track along our offices, and we would send stuff back and forth. We had a little train that we would send back and forth. Some days, you’d load it with water and it would go and crash into a guy’s office, and another day… One day, Bob Lovejoy sent it into my office, and it was on fire! He’d poured lighter fluid on it. So I’m in my office with this train on fire, pouring a water bucket on it to try to put the fire out.

That was the real fun part back then. There were things flying or running around, and guys playing practical jokes every day. It was probably the most fun time at the company. But again, Hot Wheels was not a major part of the company. We were just a small division; Barbie was the big thing.

HWC Gary: Sounds like a great environment for creativity.
Larry Wood: Oh, it was unbelievable. It was not a profit-making company -- it was a fun company. We made money, but it was never “How much did that car cost?” or “How much did that set cost?” It was always “Hey, that’s a great set -- let’s do it!” It was a completely different time.

HWC Gary: So maybe now you can finally answer this question: What is your favorite from your original car designs? What do you think really represents you, your style, and your interests?
Larry Wood: Copying a Camaro or copying another car… that was fun. You had to change the wheel size, you got to do a Super Charger sticker through the hood and everything… But the fun part for me was doing the original designs. Then you come back to my Passion, and you come back to the Bone Shaker. In between, there were dozens and dozens of cars -- some of them not great -- but still, it was an original design that was fun to do at the time. So those were probably the best ones.

But I think my pride and joy of Mattel is probably the Legend To Life Snake. I had to make sure it was accurate, I had to get the announcer, I had to make the car work, I had to go out and photograph the real car… and of course, it was a 200-and-some dollar car, so it had to be a really nice car. Doing the whole thing. And when it was done, the way it worked… The way the Christmas tree counted down and the car did a wheelie… That was probably the pride and joy of the whole time I was there. It was so much more involved than just making another die-cast car. It had the mechanism, it had to be accurate the way it worked, the background, the scenery… everything was real accurate. That was not a toy; that was something for a real car guy. People would shake their heads and say, “Oh, man… I didn’t know Hot Wheels could do that!” That was the best.

HWC Gary: We talked about cars you liked… what about cars you weren’t happy with?
Larry Wood: Everybody kids me about the Bubble Gunner. I kinda like that it was a bubble gum machine… it had a theme to it. But now when you look at it, you go, “What the hell was I thinking?”

I think one of the things I missed the most on was that ’34 Sedan Delivery. I missed on the width a little bit; it’s a little too thin. It bugs me every time I see it. And yet, back then, we didn’t have the digital stuff where you would look at it and be able to say I made it too thin, make it a little wider. Now -- with the digital -- in a day, you get a sample in your hand, you say, “Oh, it’s a little too wide or a little too narrow. I’ve got to change this or that.” It really makes a big difference. You can really get the car down to the right proportions without making any mistakes. And they’re fairly fast. I don’t do the digital work; I give them the sketches and the guys do the digital stuff in the model shop or overseas. In a week, they can give me a rough model of the size and shape and go from there.

~End of Part 2~

[Rayz-HWC 0]

HWC Gary: As someone who’s been doing this for forty years, what do you think is -- or what do you want to be -- your legacy?
Larry Wood: Just that I took Hot Wheels from basically nothing, and was here the whole time till it became a major line. A lot of people get into the job, and then leave the job, and they really didn’t make an impact on it. If nothing else, I kept the line surviving for many years -- mostly the 15 years I was there by myself when Hot Wheels was basically down and out.

I was in plenty of meetings where Hot Wheels were gone. They would say, “We’re not making enough money. We can’t afford to do the tooling. Let’s get rid of this line.” One of the meetings I was in was when we lost the Redline wheels. I was just a kid, so I couldn’t very well say, “You big shots ought to keep the Redlines.” In the ’70s, they got rid of Spectraflame colors to save money, they got rid of the Redlines… It was just a matter of surviving.

The big turnaround was when fathers, when they went to the store to buy a toy for their kid, finally realized they had so much fun with Hot Wheels, they would go out and buy Hot Wheels (for themselves). And then, of course, the design department got bigger, and the whole of Mattel realized that we had something going here, and it took off on its own. But that’s really the big turnaround from just sitting there doing a car that wasn’t going to be a big deal, to -- all of a sudden, wow! -- we gotta do a lot of cars.

HWC Gary: 20 years. The kids who loved them have become the adults who buy them…
Larry Wood: Exactly. Bought ‘em for their kids. The same thing happened to Barbie. Barbie had a huge spike 20 years after her start, because now it was time for the mothers to go to the store for their two- or three-year-old, and they’d pick up a Barbie.

The same thing happened to both Hot Wheels and Barbie… which means we did a good job for the kids. They remember it, and it was a good value for their money. It still is. It’s hard to believe that we’ve managed to make a dollar car for forty years. I mean, there’s nothing else out there that has the exact same price on it. You’ve got to give the people that have made the vehicles through the years credit for doing that.

HWC Gary: You must feel very fortunate to have had this career that you just loved.
Larry Wood: When I give talks to schools and stuff, I always tell them it’s the little things in life… The little things like when you decide “I think I’ll go to college to be a car designer.” Although that is a big thing at the time, where is that going to lead me? Or you go to a party, and you meet somebody, and they work at a certain place like Mattel. You know the Howard Rees story. We almost didn’t go to that party. It was a foggy night, and it was down in Torrance; we lived in the Valley. It was cold and wet… it was the fall. Almost didn’t go. I’d still be out stealing hubcaps or something. You’d be surprised, the older you get, how the little things in life make a big difference. Keep your eyes open and think, “Is this an opportunity that will change my life?” Sometimes it will be, even though you don’t realize it. You never know.

My rule is that if you get up on Monday morning, and you feel like going to work, rather than “Oh, no -- I have to go to work,” that would be the ultimate. And most of my life has been that way. Sure, there’s been years where I was just paying the bills, or making sure the house didn’t fall down around me or something. But most of my life has been pure luck. My wife and I occasionally say to each other, “How lucky can we get?” For a guy who just likes to draw and mess with cars…

Here I am past my mid-sixties, and I still feel like I’m 16 years old. I look in the mirror and realize I’m not, of course. Or I bend over to get a part, and I realize I’m not. But what if you still got this desire? I still get up early in the morning, and I’m ready to go. I feel good. I don’t feel like I’m gonna sit down. I’m gonna start a little design studio in the house and do a little drawing and stuff, so maybe that will get me off the couch. But if you’ve got the desire to do things, you’ll keep going.



I’ve had the honor and the pleasure to work with Larry Wood several times over the last few years. He is a true inspiration, and a genuine American classic. Best of luck, Larry!


-- HWC Gary

~End of Article~

[solid snake 0]

So sad that he retired.... he got so many nice design. The best of all is Bone Shaker...

[MarieJuliette 0]

Rayz, I thought you were talking about our mutual friend!

But it's sad he retires...he brought so many castings!
I hope he'll come out of retirement once in a while!!!

[zint3000 0]

Hmm read about this too this evening...
sad larr but nevertheless he will still be in conventions and stuff...
and thats a good thing tho...
hehe

[Rayz-HWC 0]

MarieJuliette wrote:

Rayz, I thought you were talking about our mutual friend!

But it's sad he retires...he brought so many castings!
I hope he'll come out of retirement once in a while!!!

Topic subject changed!