When I was a little kid, I had Matchbox cars. They were really cool. They were exact replicas of real vehicles. I had hundreds of them. I’d pay ten bucks apiece for the Rolls Royce Silver Shadow or the pipe truck right now.

Then came Hot Wheels. I thought they were absurd. They were all strange and misshapen versions of cars, with weird stickers and flames all over them. I thought at the time that cars could never, ever be made to look that garish and infantile and tacky in real life. Apparently I was very, very wrong.