While I was kind of hoping for a little more variety in what I would find (perhaps something that I would actually remember from my own childhood like classic Angry Birds or Cars stuff), 90’s/00’s NASCAR merchandise is super fucking awesome, super fucking plentiful in antique malls, and super fucking cheap, so I’m not going to complain.

I particularly like the Terry Labonte (#5 Kellogg’s car) battery pack-in thing. It just screams that it’s something that would have casually been at a store in that specific period in time, and maybe would have even been convenient for someone.

I’m reminded of the story in this S1apSh0es video (https://youtu.be/PVDoWEGA-VM) where he recounts asking his mom to pick up a specific thing of Spam so he could get the pack-in Lake Speed car as a kid in the 90’s.

Similarly, there were an absolute metric assload of #43 Petty cars being sold for extra cheap, and most of them seemed to be cereal box/snack pack-ins. We didn’t get any of those, though. Both of these (and the Tony Stewart one) are actually cars you would have bought on their own like the in-box Mark Martin one. One is Richard Petty and one is John Andretti. The only one I can firmly place a definitive manufacturer on is the Pop Secret Andretti car, it’s a Hot Wheel.

I feel the need to add that the only reason Bill Elliot Barbie was purchased was because my mom thought it was funny and interesting. I don’t mind owning it. She’s right. It is very funny and interesting.

If you too have an interest in stuff like this, I can only recommend you find an antique store somewhere; there’s going to be a lot of it and it’s all going to be a lot cheaper than if you got it on eBay or whatever. The small 1:64 cars were only, like, 1-5 dollars apiece, and the bigger Earnhardt and Gordon ones were both about 15. It feels almost unreal to me how reasonably priced everything was.