When Hot Wheels rolled into town to show off its life-sized Colour Shifters Mustang yesterday, Keith Oelrich was front and centre.
Although the Ottawa collector was as excited as the proverbial kid at Christmas, he was about two decades older and three feet taller than the core group of attendees.
A member of the Hot Wheels Collectors Society and the Ottawa chapter of the Hot Wheels collectors’ club, Oelrich, who brought his children, Erin, six, and William, three, to the event, said he played with these cars as a kid.
Collecting, he said, allows him “to see some of the old cars that I played with as a kid. Some of them are still being made today.”
A collector since the age of two, Bailey Dubeau, 11, has over 2,500 cars, including two 1968 Hot Wheels.
“I like the way they’re designed,” said Dubeau.
“We’ve met lots of collectors on the tour who have very rare cars that are worth hundreds of dollars today,” said Hot Wheels brand ambassador Philip Wiseman.
“A lot of generations have come out to our events.”
