Hot Wheels

What ‘70s blog would be complete without at least mentioning Hot Wheels? My brother and I were very fortunate in that we got a big incredible set as a base for our collection and then we got a second one. We also had the loop-de-loop set and a ton of cars.

There wasn’t a rainy day that could get us down. We’d set up huge track layouts – we had 2 superchargers, tons of curves and lots of awesome cars. We even had the little plastic clamps that connected onto the edge of a table or bookshelf. We had the really cool cases for our cars, and we even

had the little pins that went along with the cars.

Mom loved it – we’d be out of her hair for hours

on end, and the most it would cost her was a few

D size batteries. I wrote more about playing with Hot Wheels in my book, but I had to mention them here and throw in a few pictures to help us all remember.

Next time you’re at your folks house, you should grab a niece, nephew (or brother), pull whatever you have left of your Hot Wheels collection, and spend an afternoon reliving your race car memories.

The OJ Train

Ok – this one may be a bit obscure. I can’t even find anything about it on the web. When I was a little kid, so this would’ve been back in the mid to late ‘60s, my mom sent away for a kit in the mail that would use frozen orange juice cans to make little toy pull-along trains.

As best as I can recall, the kit contained a few different things. It had little axels that would poke through the lower edge of the sides of the cans with wheels on them so the cans could roll – they would resemble a fuel car. There was also some sort of connection pieces that would enable the cars to be connected together… I can’t remember if they were some little ball-joint hinges, or just a connecting string. I believe that it also came with auxiliary pieces that could be used to fashion an engine and a caboose out of cans. I don’t remember much else… were there decals to put on the cans? Was there a track that came with it? What all was included?


I do remember that it was a really special thing for us. While it may have seemed simple, it was exciting to build these trains out of empty frozen orange juice cans. They seemed to take on a magical quality when we got them done and could play with them. And of course – major props to the OJ company advertising exec that realized a great way to sell more orange juice. And I’m sure moms all over were happy that their kids wanted to drink more OJ so that they could build these trains. Between the excited and nourished kids, the happy moms and the spike in sales, it was definitely a win-win situation.

Does anyone else remember these?