13 minute read
WHERE IN THE WORLD IS DR. SPANNERS WATSON?
The First Leg of a Three-Part Tour Exploring Diecast Racing Around the World
As things stand right now, international travel seems unlikely to be a part of life again for quite some time to come. Thanks to the internet, though, it is easier than ever before to feel directly connected to others thousands of miles away.
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Diecast racing tracks have sprouted up all over the globe over the last few years, and that growth has exploded during the recent months of quarantine. There are races happening all over.
So, today we’re going to travel across many miles of terra firma and over leagues of ocean blue thanks to the miracle of travel by map! Our trip starts in Calgary, Alberta in Canada where we will meet Aaron Bird, known to most as Hot Wheels Calgary. Bird has just wrapped up a virtual tour of his own, so we will pick up right where he left off. Next we are headed 2500 miles South-ish to chat briefly with Adriel Johnson (a.k.a. 3DBotMaker).
A dip down through the panama canal and then a cruise across the Atlantic lands us just outside Lisbon, in Sintra, Portugal where we will meet Jorge Tracanas, creator of DieCast Racing Portugal. Finally we embark upon a plane for the longest stretch of our journey. Flying in the westerly direction, we will cross over the Atlantic, Central America, and most of the South Pacific, making a a 28 hour flight that in no way could be taken right now (New Zealand’s borders are completely closed to foreign flights), touching down in Auckland, where we will meet Warwick Rule of Chaos Canyon, as well as the titular character of this article, Dr. Thom “Spanners” Watson.
It is a lot to do in a little time, but for those who grew up playing Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego, or watching Indiana Jones travel by map, you should know already how we are going to get this done. And... We are off to destination number 1:
Alberta, Canada
Aaron Bird has lived in Canada almost his entire life. While it is true that he was born in the United States, he has been calling the land of beavers and maple leaves home since 1978. So, it is safe to say that despite not being his native land, it is very much his home.
A resident of Winnipeg until 2001, he set his sights westward toward the Canadian Rockies and a brighter future, which he claims to have found in Calgary, Alberta.
he affirms. Of course, diecast racing fans know that is where you will find Bird. After all, he isn’t known as Hot Wheels Winnipeg. No. He is Hot Wheels Calgary, and he’s been on the scene for long enough that his handle has been well known among other racers for years.
Bird has a following online, but he also cultivates very real friendships with the other members of the diecast racing community. He cites the “family-like spirit amongst racers” as his favorite part of that community, which is why it makes complete sense that when he and his mother returned to Ohio after almost twenty years, the trip not only included the American side of the blood relatives, but also Bird’s “Hot Wheels Family”.
Road Trip! – Aaron Bird (left) hangs out with HotWheelRacerMike (center) and Julius Harris (of Cleveland City Diecast, right) while traveling through Ohio on “The HotWheels Calgary Family Reunion Tour” in October 2019.
“We made several trips and stops along the way to meet many of the great people that have helped Hot Wheels Calgary grow and have truly become family to me,” Bird remembers. “If it wasn’t for the generosity of many of these people, the trip wouldn’t have been half as amazing as it was.”
Only a few months after returning to Calgary, the pandemic had become the world’s new reality, and Bird committed himself to creating a new track for the races that he hosts. His previous track, Birdco Raceway (pictured below), was a 20-foot-long four-lane drag strip that cascaded down from its 6-foot tall starting gate.
Bird’s new plans were for a massive, winding mountain pass racetrack called Birdco Pass. He just needed time to complete the new track. So, why did he launch a completely new video series entitled the “Track Tour Series” at exactly that same time?
“The primary reason for the Track Tour Series was to give me a little more time to get the new track together,” Bird explains. “It also allowed me to help other channels get noticed and build their viewer base.” The tour isn’t technically a tour, insofar as there is no travel involved. Instead, seven tracks participated in a parade of races at their home tracks narrated by Bird as a guest announcer.
“[The track owners] record five days of races for me,” Bird says. “No commentary. They add sound effects and editing features if they so wish, then send them to me.” The process then moves completely into Bird’s hands. “I do the voiceover commentary, edit things at the beginning and end, accordingly, and post it.”
The idea for the tour goes back to that road trip last year, or possibly before that. “Originally the idea was something my wife and I had talked about quite some time ago, but it was Nick Deavers [of Nick Deavers Racing] who really put the idea into my head recently and got me going on the idea.”
Bird documented his two recent diecast-related tours, and they are both easily enjoyed at his YouTube channel. Viewers can take in the entirety of The HWC Family Reunion Tour, and the action at all the tracks involved in the Track Tour Series.
Having had a lovely time in Calgary, it’s now time to make our way to California to check in with the guy who has been spreading the good word of diecast racing to the world.
Cue the traveling music... And we’re there:
California, USA
It may seem strange that the person most directly responsible for the exponential growth of Hot Wheels (and other 1:64 scale) racing as a spectator sport, didn’t play with Hot Wheels as a child.
As pointed out in videos on the 3DBotMaker YouTube Channel, Johnson got into the business of making accessories for Hot Wheels tracks back in 2014, and that has been his primary employment ever since. Now with six years under his belt operating 3DBotMaker, he has left the manufacturing aspect behind, and shifted primarily to producing his exceptionally popular racing videos.
Back on January 24, 2020, the G/O Media’s automotive-themed website, Jalopnik carried a story about Johnson’s videos entitled “These ‘Diecast Rally Championship’ Videos Are Way Too Good”, and the first major surge in 2020 of new viewers arrived at the 3DBotMaker channel.
Jalopnik is a sister site to other G/O owned outlets such as The Onion, Jezebel, and Gizmodo. So, very little time passed before a lot of other sites were covering what was going on in the diecast racing scene.
Twelve major sites and press outlets have covered the channel and Johnson’s racing series since that first article.
Johnson admits. Although, he continues that “the 3DBotmaker channel has always had a bigger reach than just diecast racing fans.” He credits changes that he’s made to this year’s programming as leading to the channel’s expanded reach.
“I’m proud of everything I’ve made in 2020,” he says. What is his favorite creation to date? “My favorite video is usually the one I’m currently working on.” Given that a new video comes out every few days, Johnson probably has a new favorite video just as you’re reading this.
Just like Aaron Bird, Johnson enjoys the community that has grown up around his channel. “The fans of the channel are overwhelmingly positive,” he expresses. When asked about what he enjoys most about the community on the whole, he says “the memes, definitely the memes”.
With another video being released imminently, we need to let Adriel get back to his work, and so we’re on our way to our next stop.
Sintra, Portugal
Not unlike Johnson, Jorge Tracanas did not play with Hot Wheels as a child either. “They weren’t a thing in Portugal in the 80s,” says the 38-year-old Sintra native. “I had a lot of Majorette 1:64s that I raced a lot...I still have my very first diecast car today.” He restored it a couple of years ago and gave the car a permanent place in his collection.
When he is not taking calls in the call center of a major coffee company, Tracanas enjoys photography as a hobby. And, as you might expect given his inclusion in this article, he’s very much into diecast racing.
“I started collecting Hot Wheels about three or four years ago,” Tracanas confides. He had previously been involved with RC models, but when that got to be too expensive, he naturally shifted to 1:64 scale cars.
And once he started collecting, the next natural step was to build a track. “I think it was last year that I had my first tournament. It was a drag track, only.”
Track 3.0 – The track structure is always being improved at Diecast Racing Portugal. The most recent track featured slot-racing track and Coroplast sections.
Despite having been actively racing for some time now, the pandemic gave him a little more time to focus on track upgrades. “I’ve always used a 1.5 cm starting lance from Hot Wheels that I got a while ago, and in my first and second versions, I used slot tracks for the turns and straightaways, too,” says Tracanas, relating the history of his track’s development. “I can say this is version 3.0 of the initial track. This track was started one week before the Covid-19 quarantine got here, so I’ve had to use what I’ve already got to do the track. Right now I’m still using slot track in the turns, but I’ve made my straights out of Coroplast [corrugated plastic sheets].”
All of the redesigning and work on the track is intended to remove the remaining slot track from the overall structure. Tracanas is a bit of a perfectionist with regards to his set-up. “I don’t think I will ever be happy with it, because my goal is to do a diorama, and to also store my Hot Wheels, so I believe I’ll be constantly expanding and changing something.”
Graphic and Novel – Diecast Racing Portugal uses dialog bubbles to convey the race commentary.
One thing that is unlikely to change is Diecast Racing Portugal’s unique style of presentation. While Tracanas’s command of English is exemplary, he still prefers not to have to do commentary for the videos in his non-native tongue. Instead of his races being described by on-air announcers, he uses dialog bubbles akin to those in comic books. This creates an aesthetic unlike any other races currently online.
Another deviation from the standard practices of other racing channels gives Tracanas’s races a distinctly local flavor. He doesn’t use names of online racers as his drivers.
Tracanas has a lot of exciting ideas about the future of his track, including a couple that we can’t tell you about just yet. But, you can be sure that when he is ready to share the new aspect, it will be different from what anyone else is doing, and that we will cover it here in Diecast Racing Report.
With that little bit of teasing, we will make our final jump in this bit of globetrotting.
Te Ika-a-Māui, New Zealand
I don’t know how to pronounce the official name (above) of New Zealand’s North Island, but that’s where you’ll find the city of Auckland, and in Auckland we will find the home of Chaos Canyon.
Warwick Rule is different than the other men mentioned in this article, in that he was not actively participating in diecast racing prior to the Covid-19 quarantine. He, like many others, discovered the sport by way of seeing an article about Johnson’s races. Yet he has one very important thing in common with the others featured here. He is actively trying to grow the worldwide community of diecast racing fans.
Rule’s involvement in the community has taken a very steep trajectory since his getting sucked-in by his first 3DBotmaker viewing. “I started with some orange track on our deck and it grew quickly from there.,” he reminisces.
He was quickly on to building his own track out of materials he had around his studio (like Tracanas, Rule is a photographer). He was using a PVC foam product that is sold under the name of Palight. And, he shared his experiences of his track building on RedlineDerby.com, where others in the community embraced his ventures into the field.
“When I started, I struggled to find any other channel [other than 3DBotMaker] to watch, and then I found redlinederby.com and and found some new channels,” Rule relates.
So, Rule built his own handmade track, gave it a post-apocalyptic vibe, and started to hold races with the cars he had on hand.
“I went from having the 10-15 cars I had leftover from my younger days, to buying 45 just when I started at the end of March (as New Zealand went into lockdown), and now I have somewhere around 500,” Rule tells of his personal diecast collection.
Rule’s races are presented in twoannouncer format. His two commentators are Dr. Thom “Spanners” Watson and Frank “The Guru” Gibbs. The former is voiced in Rule’s own relaxed tones, while the latter is digitally modulated up slightly in pitch and given a more rough-around-the-edges personality to go along.
One of the most endearing things about the two characters is that they have well fleshed-out backstories, and that leads to solid storytelling as their relationship becomes more clear during races.
“Spanners used to run a garage/ workshop and raced on the weekends, but he never made the big time. Now he has a chance to be involved with the racing scene and he is fully into it. Guru runs a speed and custom shop which focuses on more rat rod style vehicles. He is all about cool looking cars and going fast. He’s not always appropriate, because he talks before he thinks, but he just calls things as he sees them. He knew Spanners from a few races they met at and they became friends over that time. He was invited by Thom to join him and the producers agreed.”
Rule’s characters are more than just his race announcers. The are also the hosts of his other major project, the DSPN (Diecast Sports Programming Network).
DSPN is a weekly recap of diecast racing activities from all over the planet. The show is produced in conjunction with redlinederby.com and has already established itself as an indispensable commodity within the diecast racing community.
And Rule has quickly made other moves which ensure his relevance within the sport. His track, Chaos Canyon, was one of the seven tracks that Aaron Bird made part of his recent Track Tour Series. “It was so much fun!” says Rule of the project, “It was a lot easier for me as there was little production - one camera angle only, no music or commentary to do, no graphics. I approached him when I heard he was doing it, to see if I could be involved and he was open to it. I think it’s a great idea and am definitely keen to do it again. It was also quite funny to see how someone else commentates on my track."
Even in completely different hemispheres, diecast racing brings together a community that helps to make the world a little smaller.
Editor’s Note: There is a lot more to each of the interviews that led to this interview. If you would like to read any of the interviews in their entirety, they are available to our Patreon patrons. Consider becoming a patron of DRR: https://www.patreon.com/DiecastRacingReport!
