EYE-C: Bruce Weiner Microcar Museum Pt.1

For the past couple of years, Missy and I talked about starting our own personal two-person FIELD TRIP CLUB called the "EYE-C", an acronym that stands for "EXPLORE YOUR ENVIRONMENT CLUB" (see what I did there? Clever, right?). The mission of the club would be to visit and explore tourist traps, historical sites, museums, etc. in and around the place where we live...which is something that we like to do naturally anyways. By making it "official", we figured it would force us to do this more regularly rather than sporadically. In our minds, we thought we would compile a list of never-before seen (by us) places and things we would like to visit and explore and then slowly but surely, cross those them off our list, always adding to the list when whenever we discovered something of interest...

We decided that we would make the BRUCE WEINER MICROCAR MUSEUM at the DUBBLE BUBBLE ACRES in Madison, Georgia our first "official" EYE-C post (though really, last year's ATHENS' MUSIC HISTORY TOUR was our first EYE-C foray, but I digress). As of last week, the "World's Largest Collection of the World's Smallest Cars" no longer exists. In a couple of weeks, the entire collection is being auctioned off piece by piece. Our friend Gary hepped us to the fact that the museum would be closing for good, so a couple of weeks ago, we thought we better go check it out. When we got there, the lot was all parked up and we had to park off the busy main road near the BMW ISETTA ON A POLE, which marked the driveway leading to the museum...







Missy holding up my little MICROMACHINES BMW Isetta for comparison:



We saw this menacing HEARSE parked outside...we actually saw a bunch of hearses in and around Madison. Apparently, there was a whole hearse car rally of some sort and many of them made the pilgrimage to the microcar museum to "pay their respects":





Once inside, we were immediately struck by how immense and varied the collection was. We didn't even know where to begin...

























I really liked this British microcar called a FRISKY:























In the back of the museum is a room filled with all kinds of DUBBLE BUBBLE and vintage candy ephemera and memorabilia. Unfortunately, the room was roped off to the public, but people could lean in over the velvet ropes and take photos. Bruce Weiner made his fortune off of Dubble Bubble gum and other candies that his company used to make before he sold it to Tootsie Roll in the early 2000s...









































I wish FIAT would totally re-make this car...I would so totally buy one if they did:















Sprinkled about the museum were all these VINTAGE VENDING MACHINES. We really liked this one for EL BUBBLE brand CANDY CIGARS: