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Thanks for
visiting! In my search across the Internet for anything and everything Highway 35 World Race and AcceleRacers related, I found very little out there. Mainly, it was snippets here and there; always leaving me wanting more. I created this site (and the Accelepedia) to be a central store-house of the fictional and real-world information regarding the universe of Hot Wheel's Highway 35. If you would like to contribute information, photos, images, etc., please feel free to contact me. Suggestions, comments and gripes are welcome too (well... the gripes probably won't be welcome, but I'll read them anyway). About Me (and my Obsession)It all started one day when I went to pick up my 5 year old son from a visit at a friend's house. When I got there, he was watching a movie on TV - and being one that gets easily absorbed in "cartoonish" things I started watching too. It was a scene where this blond surfer-dude was driving a funny looking car, being chased by these black, stubby, flying things. The surfer-dude raced his car up a ramp and grabbed the "Wheel Of Power," destroying the evil stubby flying things in the process. I thought "Hey, this is cool." I was hooked from that moment on. Soon after that I went on a business trip out of town. Since my two boys have grown to expect presents whenever I return from being on the road, I had an excuse to buy the Highway 35 World Race full-length feature film on DVD. Much to the joy of my kids and I, we sat for hours on end watching the movie over and over again. It got to the point where we could re-enact scenes at will with perfect dialog. To this day, my two year old will spontaneously shout "Get out of my car NOW!" As you can probably guess, my boys wanted the official cars and other World Race merchandise. They, of course, already owned hundreds of Hot Wheels and other assorted 1:64th scale wheeled vehicles, but in this amazing collection there turned out to be only two officially painted Highway 35 cars (and I'm still not sure how we got those in the first place). The boys were making do with Highway 35-like cars - cars of the same model, but not the same paint jobs. Not wanting my kids to have little long faces (and since I was quite obsessed as well), I started searching around for Highway 35 stuff. Being that this was the end of 2004, I was too late to find any cars and other items in stores. Christmas was looming and though I found a used copy of the Episode 1 DVD in a second-hand book store, I was drawing a blank. That's when I discovered where all the Highway 35 stuff was - on eBay. Christmas morning came and went. Santa had come through with some Highway 35 stuff, but not a lot since Santa's budget couldn't afford much of the high dollar prices being demanded on those auctions. But it was enough to make a 2-, 5- and 33-year old happy - for a while. After the New Year, I found myself with some extra money in my pocket so I finally started bidding on a full 35 car set of World race vehicles. After getting out-bid in the final 3 seconds of several auctions (I hate eBay bid-bots or whatever the cursed things are called), I was getting desperate. Finally, I plunked down $300 on a full set in an eBay Buy It Now. That hurt the wallet pretty bad, but we sure had fun ripping into those MIMP vehicles! Afterwards, it got kind of silly. For about a month after that, I would do a nightly count of the World Race cars. I would walk around for days tearing apart the house every time the boys would misplace one. (I'm better now, by the way - I only spot check every once in a while.) Then came the AcceleRacers. While hunting for World Race stuff on eBay around Christmas, I started seeing AcceleRacers cars show up in the auctions. Having seen the prices on eBay for the original series, I wasn't going to be caught paying premium prices again. We started hunting the cars over the holidays and eventually collected a set of the first seven for each boy (that's 3 sets in case you've not been paying attention).
Still, even if I don't get rich on my AcceleRacers collection, its fun. Its given me and my boys another thing to do together and that's great. Its also provided me some ways to push some skills further (i.e. this website and a 9' wide mural of Power Rage painted in the boys' bedroom). My friends and family think its kind of odd, but hey - what do they know? Mattel's theory of a story-driven line of toys is definitely working in my house. I'm sure that if you're reading this, there's a pretty good chance that you're caught up in the same thing. Or maybe you're a collector with a similar, yet different, set of issues. For what ever reason, I hope you find this site useful and enjoyable!
- Brian |
Despite having seen the first bits
courtesy of the DVDs in the HyperPods, AcceleRacers: Ignition
showed in all its glory on the Cartoon Network and it was a big hit in our
household. We pretty much left World Race behind and dived
head-first into AcceleRacers. At least once a week you can find me
(and maybe the boys) in the local mega-stores picking through the
over-stuffed racks of AcceleRacers trying to keep the cards from falling
off and starting an avalanche of toys. Additionally, the search is
complicated by the abundance of car variations and errors - which, for
some reason, I just have to have. I guess I am subconsciously hoping
to recoup my $300 by selling my set (MOMC, BTW) on eBay in a year.