BACKROADS • JANUARY 2022
Page 11
Morton’s BMW Motorcycles presents Dr. Seymour O’Life’s
MYSTERIOUS AMERICA
HOT WHEELS & MILLICENT MILLVILLE ARMY AIR FIELD MUSEUM
1 LEDDON ST, MILLVILLE, NJ 08332 • 856-327-2347 • p47millville.org I know this gal. You know her too. This past March she turned 62, and she still has the perfect figure. Her name, Barbara Millicent Roberts. We all know her as Barbie. Recently, while on a visit to the Millville Army Air Field Museum, I came across something just a tad out of place and slightly a mystery to me – why there would be 300 Barbie dolls, along with an original sculpture and model of the curvaceous lady, in an Army Air Base Museum. But, there was more – much more. Probably the second greatest collection of Hot Wheels Cars in the world. More on the first later. My mechanic, Mark, has a most serious collection of Hot Wheels, and I know that Rathjen has gotten carried away with collecting them over the last few years. It seems that once Shira got used to her husband getting excited about spending $1.09 on some tiny, wacky toy car, she got into it herself. She even got him a Hot Wheels Mars Curiosity Rover. They now have a decent col-
lection of cars and a fold-away track with dual loops. Covid be damned – they raced them down the hallway. Hot Wheels have an interesting history…For more than five decades, Hot Wheels has provided adrenaline-fueled vehicle play that ignites the challenger spirit in every kid with the most outrageous and innovative cars and track systems. Hot Wheels was born when Mattel cofounder Elliot Handler challenged his design team, which included a General Motors car designer and a rocket scientist, to create a toy car that was cooler and performed better than anything on the market. They answered with the first-ever trackable toy car. Handler was so impressed by the car’s groundbreaking new wheel design and performance that his first response, when he saw it rolling along the floor was: “Those are some hot wheels!” Thus, a toy legend was born. When I toured the museum (oh so impressive on its own), in truth, I was really looking for the Hot Wheels collection about which I had heard rumors. But it was not to be found. Well, not in the main museum building. It took a bit of convincing to have the single volunteer, Mr. Bush, to close up the main museum just so he could open up the library for five
