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A true treasure story about a Canadian rear-loader Beach Bomb
"I Was a Beach Bomb Bandit"
True confessions of juvenile larceny by Cub Lea
Originally posted 09/02; last major update 04/10 		Author's Note: The majority of the redline community has dismissed this story as either pure fiction or the sincere ravings of a deluded mind. While I maintain that this is in fact a true story, you'll have to decide for yourself whether or not to believe it. This article has been updated several times to address new information and untangle logical inconsistencies. I hope this is the last update, but somehow I suspect it won't be...the tale isn't over yet.

The story in brief

Beach Bomb buzz
In 1969, Mattel released the most infamous, and most sought-after, model in the history of Hot Wheels: the rear-loading Beach Bomb. This rendition of a customized Volkswagen microbus is so prized by collectors that a California firm, Brightvision, began selling replicas of this model in 2002 for about $200 apiece to collectors who'd rather have a "fake" than fork over the going rate for this monster. That rate, by the way, ranges anywhere from US$30,000 or so to a whopping $75,000 once paid at auction. Mattel pulled the Beach Bomb and retooled this toy to meet the specifications of playset accessories which wouldn't work with the original die, and the mystique generated by the original has helped to propel its ugly-sister replacement to the top of the popularity charts among collectors of the very first Hot Wheels cars.

The mystique has continued to grow, and Mattel has responded by bringing back not one, but three different Beach Bomb dies beginning in 2002: one a copy of the original rear-loader, one a copy of the side-loader, one a combination of both that sports four surfboards. As of 2010, these have been reserved for promotional and premium-collectible releases, but you can always find several examples on eBay if you're willing to shell out $35 or more. In response, BrightVision prices have plummeted from their original cost, and it's common to find "restored" rear-loaders in original Spectraflame colors (usually BrightVision bare-metal carcasses with do-it-yourself finishes) on eBay...but be prepared to pay at least $50 for these reproductions.

While it is widely accepted that no rear-loader Beach Bombs ever left the US in 1970, the fact is that at least one was supplied to Mattel Canada. I ought to know, because in the winter of 1970, I got a dark-green Beach Bomb in the mail as part of a premium disbursement during the infamous "Button Bingo" promotion. After playing that car down to what I estimate was ultimately a C7-7.5 state, I ended up trading that car for an orange '31 Woodie in nicer condition and a Matchbox...I can't remember which one. (In earlier versions, I stated - and believed at the time, that the trade was for a 'Vicky and a Woodie. In recent years, my memory has cleared to the point where I now remember that it wasn't a Hot Wheels at all...the second car was a Matchbox. At this rate, by 2021 I'll actually remember which Matchbox.)

What happened to it after that, I have no clue. I didn't particularly care for the individual to whom I traded this car (he ran with a crowd that delighted in giving me grief), but I never forgot his name. I never had a second thought about hunting him down until about 2002 when I posted my first diecast web, learned that the Beach Bomb had become legend, and thought it might be fun to post a story about my own long-lost Beach Bomb. The 'net has become far more sophisticated since then, but more recent attempts using far broader search criteria haven't been any more successful.

Even assuming that I do find this individual, it's not likely he'll be able to do anything more than verify some of this story. He knew he was trading for something of more value than your run-of-the-mill Hot Wheels, but that seemed to be all he knew. That was all any of us knew at the time. Without an Internet, or even a network of collectors communicating by mail at that time, how could either of us have known that they were anywhere close to as scarce as we know today? That car might still be out there, sitting in some kid's car box, two wheels gone, most of the paint long since flaked away and window glass clouded and cracked. But it seems far more likely that it ended up in the trash at the end of its useful life, never to find its way into the eager hands of a diecast collector.

2002-2010: The story of the story

Artist's rendition:


Here's the closest I could come to an actual pic of the Beach Bomb I owned in 1970: a somewhat munged "artist's rendition" of a dark-green Brightvision copy (this one with non-standard-color 'boards). (Thanks to "Voodoo Mike" for the original image.) This is very close to the actual color of my 'Bomb; when it left my hands, it also had a few "hippie" decals saved from the decal sheet from my side-loader. If you do ever run into it, and by some miracle it still has its original 'boards, then here's something that hasn't been published until now: I had already lost one surfboard by the time I traded my 'Bomb away. The surfboards I included with it were actually lifted from my sideloader at the insistence of the person who traded me for it..


The joke's on - no, about - me

While it wasn't the first time I was the subject of jokes told behind my back, it didn't sting any less as an adult than it did as a child. Fame is a bitch, people...these aren't even very funny.

Here's a couple of the jokes which apparently circulated at collectors' conventions in the late 'noughties':

"Do you know that guy in Canada who traded away a rear-loader in grade school? Well if you know anyone who does, I hear the Raptors (NBA franchise) are looking for a new manager."
(Apparently this has also been told as the Clippers, the Rangers, and LA Kings.)

"Did you hear about the guy in Canada who says Mattel sent him a rear-loader Beach Bomb in the mail? This is why we need a warning label on Canadian beer."

But here's the thing: we don't know. I'm not going to hire a private detective to track this guy down...there's nothing in it for me except perhaps a one-in-twenty chance of a finder's fee...if my old schoolmate still has the car, or knows who got it as a hand-me-down, or has any more respect for me now than he had then. So why should I bother making any more than the most modest effort to track him down? Well, a couple of years later, I got a reason.

This page was posted in 2002 as part of my first Hot Wheels web, preceding even the "Strippers" gallery. As with almost everything I was writing at the time, it was a very uneven tale, full of typo's and serious inconsistencies. My memory of the events in question was still foggy and very incomplete, and the story might have read a little more like a fever dream than a childhood reminiscence. Dates were confused (and confusing to the reader), memories were mixed, and I had to admit once I recognized this that the disbelief of readers was somewhat understandable, in spite of my efforts to be as sincere and forthcoming as possible.

In the first major update to the story, I chose to address this disbelief in the only reasonable manner: I offered to provide names of individuals who might be able to verify both my claims of ownership and who might possibly know the next owner's whereabouts. But after thousands of pageviews in the next few years I didn't receive a single sincere request for the individual's real name. (For the record, I've always made it clear that I will only release his name to someone who gives me written assurance that the privacy of my schoolmate will be respected. We may not have cared for - or even respected - each other as kids, but I sure wouldn't want my name tossed around by a stranger in similar circumstances.)

It seems that a number of redline experts did drop by for a peek at the story, but none contacted me. So I contacted one of them...and was basically treated like a young child who wants to convince Daddy that he saw a leprechaun in the dumpster. I was assured that I must be confused, that no Beach Bomb ever made it to Canada in 1969, and that no one was interested in discussing the matter any further.

I'll admit it...that stung. I know I shouldn't have cared, but I did. In September of 2004, I was selected by hotwheelscollectors.com as one of their first spotlight collectors. When my November spotlight was published, it included a mention of my old Beach Bomb, and of the story I had posted on my website. That got word spreading in a hurry.

Hundreds of pageviews later, still not a single person had bothered to find out the name of the person to whom I traded my 'Bomb. But that's not how it ended. A couple of years later, after I had decided to stop updating my Hot Wheels pages and pulled most of the content from my personal website, I received an e-mail from some anonymous samaritan who'd read my page and wanted me to know that there were jokes about me circulating at at least one collector's convention.

Still nobody asked about the next owner of the car.

Early in 2010 I had one of those hot streaks. I was finding vintage Hot Wheels and Matchbox' in the thrift stores for the first time in years. I was getting deals on eBay like I never thought I'd see again. And I was running into collectors - plural - whom I actually wanted to know as people, one of whom convinced me to give this website one last try.

So this page is back in yet another form, perhaps the last edit, perhaps not, but the story below contains still more clarifications on the original, and I am still standing firm on my claim that this actually happened. There really was a green rear-loader that made it to Canada, and this is its story.

1970: The story behind the Canadian rear-loader

Update 04/10:

Here's something I missed in earlier edits. The Beach Bomb I received wasn't blister-packed unless it came inside a Speedometer accessory set (which it didn't...cars were never bundled with that accessory) because the Beach Bomb was apparently never blister-packed. The blister would have included a badge, and there is no doubt that I would have noticed that. Fellow Button Bingo (see below) players might remember that there was a bingo space for a Beach Bomb badge, but the bingo card showed a rear-loader Beach Bomb, not the newer side-loader. Thus ensued many a schoolyard argument over whether Mattel would honor a bingo card with a Beach Bomb badge from a side-loader, especially when the rules of the promotion clearly stated "Simply match the picture in the circle with with the Collector Button that comes with that Hot Wheels car." So could you match the picture of the rear-loader with the side-loader's badge or not? I've since been told that they did in fact honor the side-loader's badge.

So the Beach Bomb that I got wasn't blister-packed. It was probably sent to me in a baggie; I do remember receiving a baggie'd car or two by mail from Mattel, mainly because it was odd to receive any car in that form (other than the chrome club cars, of course), but I was never sure if I was remembering the night I received the Speedometer premium or the night I received the two-free-cars premium.

I state categorically that I was an original owner of a brand-new, blister-packed dark-green Beach Bomb. I know because I remember every single Hot Wheels I owned from 1968-71, the exact colors of many and the paint colors of most, and I remember most of my Matchbox cars too, because I loved those cars.

Prior to re-entering the hobby in 2001, I had no clue that my old Beach Bomb was in any way special or valuable. So I didn't "work" my memories of it. I have thousands of memories of varying levels of clarity around my Hot Wheels and Matchbox'; I had some very difficult years and these were my most valued toys from the age of 6 through to age 11 at which point slot cars and stereo equipment became more important.

Initially I thought I had gotten the rear-loader for Christmas, but that couldn't have happened. I did get a side-loader for Christmas, but not the rear-loader. So where did I get it?

For a while I thought I must have found it in London, Ontario at the Northridge Mall Zeller's or the Huron Heights Woolco stores. But as I began to track Beach Bomb lore on the web, I learned that I could only have gotten it one way: directly from Mattel as part of a prize or premium disbursement.

Update 04/10:

In previous postings, I was quite sure I got my Beach Bomb as part of the two- or three-line Badge Bingo prize. Now that I remember a long-forgotten conversation with my mother, I realize that I could have gotten it with the four-line prize...in which case I came by it honestly, and couldn't call myself a "Beach Bomb bandit" after all.

I also have photos of a bingo card in a different configuration from the ones I used, cards that do not require a Beach Bomb badge to fill the card.

These photos also clearly show the card in a standard 25-space bingo configuration. I recalled the card having 30 spaces, since I had forgotten just how insane the disbursements were. Four lines got you a prize worth almost as much as the 19 cars required to fill it. And if you could find all 24 cars (not an easy feat by this time), the whole card cost less to fill than the prize you'd get for filling it. Curiously, I never saw a copy of this configuration of the card...the ones in my area all included the Beach Bomb, and the side view clearly showed that Beach Bomb as a rear-loader, suggesting that this promotion was fully prepared before the side-loader was ever even molded..



This segment of the bingo-card sheet shows the five premium levels available.

Some time in 1970 - I'm guessing it was early Fall since that would have coincided with Christmas buying season, although it could have been as late as January of 1971 - Mattel ran a "Hot Wheels Bingo" promotion, referred to these days as "Badge Bingo" or "Button Bingo". Your Hot Wheels badges would fill 24 of the 25 spaces on the card, and the more horizontal or vertical lines you filled, the bigger your prize. Two full lines got you two free cars...their choice, unfortunately. Three lines got you a Speedometer accessory pack. Incredibly, four lines got you a Dual Lane Rod Runner Runner Race Set, and a full card earned you a California/8 Sizzlers Set. The top two premiums astonished me, because the nineteen cars needed for that premium only cost two dollars more than the race set itself. Twenty-four individual cars at a sale price of 88c actually cost less than the going rate for the Sizzlers set! Sure, you had to surrender your badges to Mattel, but this was amazing value, and I wanted that Sizzlers set.

What I didn't know at the time was that there were multiple configurations of the bingo card. At least one card type didn't require a Beach Bomb badge. I only ever saw one configuration, perhaps an early printing, and it did require the Beach Bomb badge (see sidebar above). So I kept my eyes open for a rear-loader on the pegs (or a side-loader with a rear-loader badge...badge errors weren't too uncommon at the time) but I had the feeling that this was the "catch" that you so often saw in these promotions back then: there were obviously very few rear-loaders, so they wouldn't be giving away many Sizzlers sets. At least, that was how my cynical 10-year-old mind worked at the time.

But I did get the Rod Runner set. In fact, it was my first bingo premium. I'd saved every badge from every carded car I ever owned and I was only two or three badges short of the four-line prize when the contest started. I even remember fetching the parcel in my mother's car on a slushy winter day from a post office main branch.

Now here's where I begin to wonder about something. I clearly recall my mother and I talking about how the package had already been opened, and listening to her explain how they must be using this promotion to get rid of defective merchandise or stock which had been returned to the factory. If this discussion referred to the Rod Runner set, then it's entirely possible that I got the Beach Bomb as part of that kit, perhaps as the replacement car for a car which hadn't been returned with the set. On the other hand, if we were discussing the Speedometer kit, perhaps the Beach Bomb had been tossed in as a compensation bonus by a Mattel Canada employee who noticed that they were sending me returned merchandise.

Strangely, it would make the most sense if it was part of the two-free-car two-line prize. I knew two other kids who got that prize, and they seemed to be cars which had come from damaged or returned stock...none of us received cars on blister cards as part of this disbursement. But as with so many things in my life, the sensible answer isn't the right one. I'm only going on a strong feeling, but I'm pretty sure it came with either the Speedometer or the Rod Runner Race Set. That strong feeling relates to the two-car set, which I recall as a disappointment only because I already had both of the cars I was sent, and because the cars in this prize were sent to me loose, which meant no new badges for more prizes.

It seems like a meaningless distinction. But it's actually a rather important one, and here's why. If I got that Beach Bomb with the Rod Runner set, then the story spins on a different axis, because I came by that set honestly. Unlike most of my friends, I made sure none of my badges ever got lost or trashed. I had nearly every badge for every car I had ever bought, and needed only two or three more cars - none of which I really wanted - to complete four lines when the promotion began. I clearly remember that one of the cars I needed was the Mercedes 230SL, which I found easily enough on the local pegs, and actually got a second copy of as part of one of these bingo prizes. But I can't remember which cars came with the Rod Runner set, or which cars came in the two-car prize.

If the Beach Bomb came as part of any disbursement other than the Rod Runner Race Set, then I really was a Beach Bomb bandit. As retailers soon discovered, Mattel's brilliant plan to sell off less-popular castings which were accumulating on the pegs by that time unintentionally turned one hell of a lot of kids into vandals. (I'm not serious, of course. Sure, there were piles of original-release Hot Heaps still lingering on the pegs even by mid-1970, but it's preposterous that Mattel created this promotion as a means of stimulating sales of less-popular castings. Look at the cars represented on the card photo at right...it's hardly overloaded with pegwarmers. It's far more likely that Mattel was feeling a bit nervous about upstarts Johnny Lightning and, Matchbox' much cheaper Superfast line, and news that Kenner was getting into the diecast game as well, and were willing to risk significant losses in a small market like Canada to see how a generous promotion like this might skew the market.)

So I was a vandal. I'd never even think of egging a teacher's house or jamming the valve stem on a nasty neighbor's tire. But hey, Mattel was literally offering to pay me for vandalism! Think about it. You need four more badges to get a race set that you really couldn't afford on your own. The badges are all for cars you'd never buy for yourself. All it took was a flick of the wrist to slit the badge end of the blister card with your fingernail and slide the badge up your coat sleeve, and that's precisely how I accumulated the handful of extra badges I needed for my second and third prizes. I knew classmates who'd done the exact same thing to get their prizes and thought this was wizard fun. To me it was truly harrowing work. I was terrified at the thought of being caught by a department store floor-walker...and even more afraid of how my mother would react.

"Badgelifting" was so stressful, in fact, that I probably only stole two or three in total. I actually ended up buying cars I didn't really want just for the badges needed to fill bingo card slots. I had no interest at all in the Maserati Mistral or the Mantis, for example, but I wound up with two Maserati's at one point just to complete a pair of prize combinations. It was simple economics: three bucks to fill three lines for a Speedometer set was too good a deal to pass up.

This promotion was never repeated, in part no doubt because it ended up costing big-box stores in Canada, where the original idea might even have been to help these stores by giving kids an incentive to buy some of the castings that weren't selling well. By late winter, it wasn't uncommon to see a dozen or more "badgelifted" blisters on a store's Hot Wheels pegboard. You'd occasionally see an empty broken blister before that where some kid had hiked the car, but badgelifting was a phenomenon that came and went with Badge Bingo.

Anyhow, back to the Beach Bomb.

So I don't yet remember which prize included the Beach Bomb. But I do clearly remember my reaction when I received it, because frankly, it was probably my least-favorite of the 1969 castings. Hot Wheels were the biggest things in my life at the time; I would lie awake nights imagining myself spotting a gold Splittin' Image (the Holy Grail of Hot Wheels at my school) in the package containing my two-car prize, or a red Red Baron, one of the hardest cars to find anywhere at that time. Just about any other car, I knew how to trade for a car I wanted. But jeezus...the Beach Bomb? It soured my whole day. And what irritated me most is that it was the only car I owned up to that time which had "capper" wheels, considered by the kids I knew as the best-looking wheels you could get, even if they didn't perform very well on the track. I had seen lots of cappers on other kids' cars, but for some reason, I could never find them on the ones I bought. My Beach Bomb was my first "capper".

Update 04/10:

"I recall with crystal clarity that it was dark green and came in a blister pack with badge and decalque sheet." So I believed in the first draft of this article. I was right: it was dark green. And it did have hippie decals. But those decals came from the decal sheet of my light-green side-loader Beach Bomb.

"Immediately upon breaking it out of its blister, I decalqued it with the hippie flowers to see if I could at least make it palatable...and failed miserably, lacking as I was the artistic prowess to even produce a legible signature." True as far as it went...it didn't come in a blister, of course; my side-loader did, however, and that's where the decals came from. The points on the wheel hubs had lost chrome, and there were a few paint chips around the edges, but by the time I traded it away it still had flower decals.

The worst part about it - and this too I recall quite clearly a full 32 years later - was that I could not be entirely sure that this wasn't part of God's punishment for my thieving ways and for forsaking my commitment to pray and abide by the Commandments. (I had been aggressively seduced into a charismatic Christian church run by my uncle the previous summer, and many months later I was still half-committed to some pretty hare-brained notions of human reality.) My folks had broken up, I was about as popular as a cold sore at my new school, I was packing on weight in a hurry, and my grades were plummeting despite my best efforts...this must be a punishment. Hey, if you're ten, it makes sense...forty or so cars in the Mattel catalog that year, and I get...a Beach Bomb!? You couldn't have convinced me then that this wasn't a message from the Almighty. It might not be, but I figured I'd better pay attention just in case.

But it was a Hot Wheels. That meant it grav-raced regularly with the rest of my collection. Looking at the BrightVision replicas, and knowing that bigger, heavier pieces like the Drag Bus and the Custom Fleetside tend to do very well on gravity tracks, you' imagine the Beach Bomb would be a pretty solid performer. In point of fact, it wasn't just too narrow in the waist. (It was pulled from release because it was too narrow to be used with the Supercharger accelerator, and too tall for use with the Rod Runner.) It was also narrow in comparison to the better grav racers...about the width of the back axle of the Silhouette, in fact.

And because it raced regularly, it got "race paint"...specifically, a few of the hippie waterslide decals I had left over from my side-loader Beach Bomb. I never imagined they'd help...they just made finishing second-last among my Hot Wheels a tad less embarrassing.

1971: The Beach Bomb gets a new owner

Update 04/10:

In prior postings, I stated that the trade included a 'Vicky and a '31 Woody for the Beach Bomb. A year later, I was less sure about the 'Vicky, and said that I had no clue what the second car had been. Only in the last year did I finally remember clearly that while Rich had a 'Vicky and an orange '36 Ford Coupe (which I thought at one time had been part of the trade), the only Hot Wheels he was willing to trade was his '31 Woodie. There was a second car in that trade, but it was a Matchbox - probably an early SuperFast, certainly nothing special - and not a Hot Wheels.

I also suggested in the past that Rich seemed to have a better sense than I had of the car's real value. I'll retract that here, now that I remember more clearly what he actually said about it. He wanted the car mainly because nobody else had it, and because it wasn't being made any more. Neither he nor I really had any strong sense that it might be as rare or as special as it turned out to be.

I was nearly always the youngest or second-youngest kid in my grade, and I went to tough schools. If you weren't out of toys and into sports and girls by age 11, you were a punching bag. "Rich" was an exception. He was a year and a half older, but he hung out with the kids who made sport of making the lives of kids like me miserable. All we had in common was Hot Wheels, and we only ever made a truce long enough for an after-school trading session. I remember Rich's blonde hair, tan sweater and chunky build. I remember trading that Beach Bomb to him for an orange '31 Ford Woody in near-mint condition, and a second near-mint Matchbox. That was the best deal I was likely to get, and I was reasonably happy with the value.

While we were classmates for another several months, I never saw Rich socially again after the deal was done, and I don't think I ever saw that car again.

And this is where the story ends. I didn't have many friends at the time, but I did have three - perhaps as many as five - Hot Wheels playmates who definitely saw that rear-loader while it was in my possession. All three were bright kids who may in fact remember it...I certainly remember one of them being more of a Johnny Lightning fan, and having the money to support it. (JL's at the time were almost twice as expensive as Hot Wheels.) But it's not likely any of them have thought twice about their own Hot Wheels, let alone mine, since they reached puberty. It's been decades since I've been in touch with any of them, but you can be very sure that if I ever do run into any of them again, one of the first things I'll ask is whether they remember that little green VW van of mine that nobody else seemed to have at the time.

2010: What next?

As I mentioned earlier, I have no illusions that this car is out there somewhere, and will some day turn up in the hands of a lucky collector who traces the provenance and vindicates my claims. The more I remember about Rich, the less confident that I am that he would have ever bothered to hand it down to another kid, stash it away as a keepsake, or hold onto it long enough to become a collectible. I do hold out some hope that it might turn up one day, but I think it's far more likely that it's lost forever to history. If I ever did track him down, I am sure he'd remember the trading session, and would probably remember the 'Bomb too. But I have few illusions that this would ever vindicate me in the eyes of those skeptical of my story. After all, how can I ever prove that we haven't been in touch and aren't working together to concoct a hoax? I can't, that's how. Hey, can you prove that you never robbed a train? No, you can't.

So where does that leave me? Well, I originally posted this tale because I had been poking around on the web and had learned that this piece had become an extremely valuable rarity. I thought the story might make an interesting teaser to bring people to my site. What I didn't expect was that I'd be considered by most serious collectors as somewhere between an outright liar and a deluded wannabe. I didn't expect that my offer of the name of the individual who got my Beach Bomb to anyone serious about tracking it forward in history to be met with complete and total disinterest for eight full years. Nor did I expect that I'd actually become such a well-known footnote in Beach Bomb history that I'd be the subject of jokes passed around at a collector's convention. But that's what has happened. And it has taught me a valuable lesson about the character of diecast collectors in general and Hot Wheels collectors in particular. It hasn't been what you'd call a fun or rewarding experience.

But while I've had these misfortunes, I've also had the good fortune to encounter perhaps more than my fair share of some of the nicer people in the hobby. In fact, this story has actually helped me to separate some of the shadier characters from the good guys...I'm not a good judge of character and I tend to see most people as better than they really are. But when I tell this tale to a knowledgeable collector, I can usually deduce from their response to it whether I want to get to know that person any better than I do.

This has also been a rather remarkable adventure into the realms of my own memory. So many details that seemed so clear when I first put this story together fell apart on me when I recalled other details. Every detail appears to have been accurate, but the order in which those details appeared, and the situations in which they occurred, very often turned out later to be quite different. I once believed I had a far better memory than most people, and that I wasn't one of those people who could sit in a witness box and swear in all sincerity that they saw events which history proved could never have happened. But this story has taken so long to clarify, and proven to be so difficult to get right in my own mind, that I have to accept that I could in fact be one of those people. So in that respect, it's been a valuable experience.

And how about that last point? Isn't it just possible that I'm remembering this incorrectly and that I've invented the existence of this vehicle in my own mind?

No, it isn't possible, and here's why. Rich would have had no reason to trade with me for a Volkswagen anything unless I had something truly special that he wanted. Nothing involving Rich and I getting together makes sense unless the rear-loader really existed. I didn't have the money to collect anything costlier than Hot Wheels...I only ever owned one original Johnny Lightning, and my parents couldn't even buy me Dinky, Corgi or Matchbox Kings. I remember grav-racing it...if it had been a Husky, it wouldn't have been fast enough to bother grav-racing. I'm not remembering a Matchbox...I had a Matchbox VW van, and it was gray and had long since had the side doors ripped off of it. I'm not confusing this with a side-loader...I had a side-loader...in fact, I remember having to cannibalize the surfboards on the side-loader to replace the lost boards on the rear-loader to complete the deal with Rich. Add up all of these details and there's no way I could have mistaken a rear-loader for anything else.

Details get confused over time. What persists are the feelings associated with our memories. And I could, I suppose, have waited until I had the whole story exactly right in my own mind before posting it. But had I chosen that route, I never would have bothered writing this, because without the existence of earlier drafts and the reactions they got, I never would have bothered to spend time exploring those memories and getting the details as right as I've gotten them here.

And what of all the mistakes made in earlier drafts? As I once heard in a song, "the mind guards its treasures wisely, choosing only to reveal what the soul can spend in a moment". We only remember what we can handle at the time. Memories trigger feelings, and the feelings trigger more memories. And for most of us who collect Hot Wheels as adults - sorry to say this, but it is the tragic truth - the memories we have of our childhoods, and the feelings which accompany them, don't tend to be pleasant ones. In fact, one of the main reasons so many of us collect diecasts as adults is to bank away good child-like feelings to balance out the backlog of bad feelings we carry around in our memories. I do believe that, and it's this realization more than any other which has helped me to come to grips with the collectors who've ridiculed or patronized me or questioned my integrity. If they didn't have the same bank of painful memories stored away in their souls, they'd almost certainly be involved in a more rewarding hobby and have little or no interest in little toy cars.

And the fact remains that I am one of the very few people on this planet, perhaps the only Canadian, who can sincerely claim that they once owned a brand-new rear-loader Hot Wheels Beach Bomb. Even if others choose not to believe it, I know it's true.

A note to historians and treasure-hunters

If you'd like to follow this story further by attempting to contact the individuals referred to in this article, I will provide the names of these individuals in return for a signed and witnessed statement from you (it will be posted on this site with name(s) blacked out) assuring me that you will not share or publish these names or other personal information without the expressed permission of the individuals in question. (Use the e-mail address on the contact page). If you're willing to agree to that, I'll give you all the information I can. Hey, I'd like to know what happened next as much as anyone else.

Document copyright ©2000-2010 Cub Lea. "Tampo" is a registered trademark of Tampo, Inc. Hot Wheels and Matchbox are registered trademarks of Mattel, Inc. Johnny Lightning is a registered trademark of Learning Curve Brands. "Cub Lea", "Mudge's Customs" and "cublea.net" are in no way affiliated with any brand or manufacturer mentioned on this website.

[Labeled with ICRA]