Few people have heard of it, yet many consider John Blankenbaker's KENBAK-1 to be the first commercial personal computer.
Gimp my ride: Hot Wheels manufacturing errors
By James Grahame
One side-effect of mass production is that sometimes things go amusingly wrong. David Elliott's collection of slightly strange Hot Wheels cars is a case in point. These tiny wonders were delivered to store shelves with artwork missing or incorrect, wheels mounted backwards, absent windshields and engines, or incorrect packaging.
As Elliott remarks, "Anything that can be produced can be produced wrong, and in most collecting hobbies involving manufacturing on a large scale, production errors are a specialty. Hot Wheels collecting is no exception. Collectors looking for something to make their collection unique seek out errors." Don't get too excited if you stumble across one of these little accidents in your local toy store because they're probably not worth much - maybe a $1 or so more than the standard version. In part, this is because many mistakes are quite common and easily faked by unscrupulous "dealers."
