Hot Wheels Developer: Elliot Handler

Hot Wheels Developer: Elliot Handler — page 1 — Chapter 1 Car Creator Hot Wheels cars are some of the most popular and famous toys in history More than 4 billion of them have been produced The cars are made by well-known toy company Mattel Elliot Handler is the cofounder of Mattel and the inventor of Hot Wheels Isadore Elliot Handler was born on April 9 1916 in Chicago Illinois His parents Samuel and Freida were immigrants They were both born in what is now Ukraine Samuel immigrated to the United States in 1906 Freida came to the country in 1914 That year Samuel and Freida were married They moved to Chicago to start a family Soon the couple had three children Albert Isadore and Sylvia Isadore would eventually go by his middle name Elliot But when he was young he went by the nickname Izzy When Izzy was three years old Samuel caught tuberculosis Samuel needed to live somewhere with cleaner air to ease his symptoms So the family moved to Denver Colorado They lived there for the rest of Izzy’s childhood 4

Hot Wheels Developer: Elliot Handler — page 2 — Elliot Handler’s dream of making toy cars with speed power performance and cool design came to life with Hot Wheels 5

Hot Wheels Developer: Elliot Handler — page 3 — Chapter 2 Artist in the Making Izzy was a creative child He was interested in art and wanted to become a cartoonist By his teenage years Izzy was making money doing creative work He had a part-time job helping make light fixtures In 1932 Izzy met Ruth Mosko at a dance The two danced together all night and soon began dating After high school Izzy attended art school in Denver Ruth also attended college in Denver before deciding to move to California It wasn’t long before Izzy joined Ruth in California He attended the Art Center School in Los Angeles He also worked for another company designing light fixtures Ruth and Handler married in 1938 They moved into an apartment in the Hollywood neighborhood of Los Angeles The apartment included a garage shared by several tenants Hander used the garage as a as a workshop He began experimenting with a kind of plastic called Lucite 6

Hot Wheels Developer: Elliot Handler — page 4 — Lucite is a brand name for an acrylic resin first created in the 1930s In the following decades Lucite became a popular material for furniture jewelry and more 7

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