Russell Beattie

I loved Herbie when I was a kid - I remember seeing the original movies on TV (with Buddy Hacket) and Herbie Goes Bananas in the theater and thought he was just awesome. That stayed with me as an adult, actually - I remember traveling to Mexico about 10 years ago, and seeing a full-sized Herbie-look-alike on the street and being so excited I had my picture taken in front of it.

Amazingly, Herbie seems to easily transcend generations as my son Alex also loves Herbie as well. He saw Herbie: Fully Loaded at daycare a couple years ago and thought it was the greatest thing ever, without my influence at all. "Do you know about Herbie?" he asked... Well, yeah, of course! He'll still point out "Herbie cars" on the street as we drive by them, and his VW Beetle Matchbox car is the star of his toy collection. Six is a great age, no? :-)

What I haven't found in any of the toy stores is an actual Herbie toy! You know, with the actual stripes and 53 number. I find that incredibly strange, as I don't think Alex and I are alone in our fondness of the little car. Happily a while ago I found an image with the stripes and the race numbers on it ready for print out. Then you can cut it up and with some disappearing tape, transform any regular VW toy into a Herbie! I saved it to my hard drive so that I could print it out as the stripes wore off the toys.

Grab it here. I honestly have no recollection of where I found it - on some forum somewhere I think. Whoever did it, thank you! :-)

We were in the Palo Alto Sport Shop and Toy World yesterday, and found a big, beautiful classically white VW Beetle and of course just had to get it. ($7.95... yikes!) There were also other colors as well, but that would be unthinkable. Of course, it's not a Herbie until he has his stripes, so I just printed out the decals and taped them on, and realized I just had to post about this, just in case there were some other Herbie nuts out there as well.

Looks pretty good, no? Enjoy!

:-)

-Russ