Week 72: 1962 VW Beetle

When I was a kid I had another orange VW Beetle diecast, but a Tootsie Toy instead of a Matchbox like above. I'm pretty sure I had painted it orange myself with Testor's model paint. I always had bottles of Testor's paint around.

In general I wasn't into model building as a kid, but I had the paint available due to my obsession with one collection of model kits: the Aurora Prehistoric Scenes collection (which later became Monogram Prehistoric Scenes).

These things were awesome: they snapped together, alleviating the very real threat of me accidentally model-cementing a plastic dino leg to my face (I have accidentally Super Glued my fingers together), and, most importantly, they were DINOSAURS!! Yeah, like 98 kazillion other kids, I had been entranced by dinosaurs.

Well, dinosaurs and other prehistoric stuff -- these kits also had a saber tooth tiger, a giant bird, and a cavemen and cave woman, who, by the way, wore a hottie, form fitting cave woman dress as we all know all prehistoric females did. For some reason, the cave woman was being terrorized by a two-headed snake, which I still remember I painted light blue with orange* spots. I always regretted my color choice for that snake.

I wasn't a good painter, but I did try. Building those kits are some of my fondest childhood memories, even if I did all of the assembling and painting down in our creepy back basement room.

This room was, if not haunted, truly messed up. It always held an air of mustiness, melancholy, and ominous presence. You could only shut the light off by pulling a string pull cord, after which time a thick darkness would pour through the cracks in the cement block walls to attempt to pull you into some type of Trilogy of Terror nightmare, even if it was still light outside. That room also had a nasty habit of kind of sucking up sound, so even if you played music to try to keep the pending darkness away, that Seals and Croft song always sounded hollow and tinny as the gloomroom munched on your tunes like peanut brittle. That, however, is how much I liked those models -- building them even offset my fear so that now even the spookiness holds a type of nostalgic charm for me.

Don't get me wrong -- I still would be terrified of that room. I just now find my terror somewhat charming.

I no longer have any of my Prehistoric Scenes models, but my memories are so complete I don't need the actual items. I've been thinking about those because Racer Z has begun seeking out Sonic the Hedgehog collectibles, and even though there is no painting OR gluing involved, a wonder if he will one day hold that same type of visceral fondness toward his collection as I do toward my prehistoric models. I hope so.

I hope I'm not depriving his future nostalgic musings by being unable to offer a haunted basement.

Side note: I went looking for images of those models online and found a website with a great photo gallery, although they all have much better paint jobs than I ever managed. The site appears to not have been updated since 2008, but it is a load of fun to browse: http://www.auroraprehistoricscenes.com/

* I suspect that orange paint was also used for painting that Tootsie Toy VW, which in turn provided a connection to this week's featured car, so maybe that bad snake paint job served a greater purpose after all.



Great picture of the VW bug by Phil Pekarcik, who I beg forgiveness for writing possibly the most tenuous connection yet between my featured car and post.