Hot Wheels tracks attachment thingamabobby

[Runwildboys]

What on Gods earth is a pie cabinet?

I think that's one of those little cabinets with ornamental metal plates on the doors, with air holes in them?

 

[CouchCoach]

What on Gods earth is a pie cabinet?

That's where most people should keep their pie holes.

 

[CouchCoach]

You're absolutely correct. Jerome Lemelson invented the flex track, among several other inventions.

Lemelson won $24.8 million (November 1989) in damages after finding Mattel willfully infringed on Lemelson’s patent, a flexible track on which the tiny metal Hot Wheels’ cars run. Lemelson was a very wealthy man. Not just from his inventions, but lawsuits as well.

Interesting and not surprising. That was almost 20 years after I left the company and even back then they were as cutthroat as any business in existence. Interesting that two of the icons for kids at that time, Disney and Mattel, would have dirty laundry.

Here's the kicker. In 1971, Mattel had a salesforce of 450 people. The irony of how important the Christmas season was to Mattel was on full display as they fired exactly 225 of them on December 22nd and 23rd and did the vast majority over the phone and had them turn in their company car and keys to the Hertz desk as the closest airport. The shock that action had was unnerving for a young 23 year old salesman and his wife expecting our first baby. Everything about it was so wrong, we had blown away our numbers and it seemed the decision was made based on pay scale. There were some really fine people fired just because they'd been there long enough to get a raise.

They did this again in 6 months, folded the Dolls and Wheels division into one and fired my boss and my counterpart, doubled my territory to include Louisiana and I began to see the writing on the wall and set up some interviews in New Orleans but I wasn't quick enough, they got me in the 3rd wave, again, right before Christmas. But I did end up in New Orleans within 30 days after that.

In my years following that, I would learn about how heartless and selfish companies could be but none as cold and heartless as Ruth and Elliott Handler who started a toy company in their garage. But when I began a career in radio broadcasting, I was to discover the other side of that and how all businesses and companies were not like that, there weren't just exceptions, those heartless and selfish ones were the actual exception. I've seen people go to extremes, including cutting their own income in order to keep their employees.

So, what the hell is the moral to your, once again, overlong story, CC? The moral, my young padawans, is that the bad and the good are always there, we just have to seek either out. I was content to think one way until my mind got opened because that was the convenient way, it took no energy to remain in the dark. And there enters the haunting thought that has caused me to reflect on decisions in the past. What else might I have been wrong about?

Didn't mean to take it there but that last sentence is the most important one I ever asked myself because it freed me from mistakes of the past and allowed me to add these 5 magic words to any thought "but I could be wrong". It is ultimate freedom to let yourself be wrong because you can then be right with yourself. Here's where all those that dislike me get to think 'yeah well, you've had a lot of practice being wrong' and I cannot argue that because I would be wrong, once again.

 

[Ranched]

Interesting and not surprising. That was almost 20 years after I left the company and even back then they were as cutthroat as any business

 

[Runwildboys]

I think that's one of those little cabinets with ornamental metal plates on the doors, with air holes in them?

Dayum, that was a good guess!

 

[ABQCOWBOY]

I got to meet the real Snake and Mongoose when Mattel signed them for their Hot Wheels.

Don Prudomme and Tom McEwen. That was a pair, for sure.

 

[Melonfeud]

What on Gods earth is a pie cabinet?

Well, back in the 1870's-1890's "mail order" was just taking flight( ever purused an repo Sears& Roebucks catalog of the above mentioned time period?) : It's kinda' like a fine china hutch / cabinet , 6' tall 3 or
4 foot wide ,bottom dbl. Doors,a waist. High bench, then another set of double doors above that, only instead of glass panes set in the doors( to show. Off the fine China tea set w/ keeping it dust free, it wld have galvanized tin with 1,000 nail punched holes in any kinda' decorative design one could imagine,,they were ventilation/ cooling holes where the upscale. Ladies of the day wld stash there oven fresh& piping hot pies in,rather than an open window sill, where the risk of "Vagabond PIE-way robbery" as it was a commonality of the period, doncha' know?( Oh,yeah, straight up truth, some were even LOCKABLE) the two that dad had collected had both been painted over the course of time in about. 10 different colors ea.,I mean one had been brush stroked so many times the PIE cooling vent holes were all clogged, LMAO



* Class is dismissed​

 

[Melonfeud]

*as "PIE" was kinda' like,,,er,,, well, like the new "CRACK",,,back then