There’s a bug on the
table. It’s called the Beetle. Caught it, turned it sideways, and placed it
in plastic to preserve it.
Brand: Matchbox
Scale: 1/58
Model: 1962 Volkswagen Beetle
I got this miniature because
we had the real thing in this color when I was a child in the ‘70s (our Beetle,
I expect, was a 1970s model). Every
afternoon, our drivers would line up to park the vehicles: Jeep, Toyota Land
Cruiser, Toyota Corona, Ford Cortina, Mercedes Benz (a finback reminiscent of
Batman’s bat mobile), etc. It was amusing to watch the drivers maneuver over a score of vehicles.
Decades later, I would have some sort of cognitive dissonance after
learning that the production of Volkswagen Beetle had been commissioned by notorious
anti-Semite Adolf Hitler. The Beetle was
designed by Ferdinand Porsche (whose magnificent cars I also collect in
miniatures). Bela Barenyi is also
credited as the designer of the Beetle. My
dissonance was something like, “Should I still love a car commissioned by a
tyrant? It’s designed by Porsche
anyhow…”
The Beetle stood out to me likely because of its solid orange
color. Having the real thing as part of
my childhood is the reason why the Beetle is one of my favorite model
cars to collect. Nostalgia is one of the
driving forces behind why collectors hoard toys. We’re not just collecting toys. We’re collecting and re-collecting memories.
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Originally published in a slightly different form on my Facebook wall days before today.
