If you joined us at Maker Faire Kansas City maybe you got to see the debut of the little Wienermobile we built for the Power Racing Series. Besides being well received from the crowd, it did pretty good in the race! Due to Moxie points (which get awarded for being awesome) we won the overall race weekend. We came home, wrote a blog post about it, and started getting ready for Maker Faire Detroit…
Detroit was a blast, and well, a few things broke, but meanwhile the folks at Oscar Mayer noticed what we did, and sent us an email asking if the BIG Wienermobile could come visit the LITTLE Wienermobile. We responded with an enthusiastic “YES!!!”
And that’s how the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile came to visit Milwaukee Makerspace on September 1st, 2017. You may notice the two Wienermobiles look quite a bit different. Well, there have been many different Wienermobiles over the years. Due to some confusion about which model we based ours on, we looked at the fact that the vehicle was designed by Carl G. Mayer in Madison, Wisconsin, in 1952 and received its patent in 1954. So we split the difference and chose number 1953. Good Enough!
Honey Mustard and Sammie Jo (yes, the “Hotdoggers” get cool nicknames) loved our little version of the Wienermobile, and we gave them a quick tour of the space, explaining what a makerspace is, and how it works, and showing off Willie’s boat for the very last time.
Since the Wienermobile was there at 9am on a Friday, a lot of our members were at work, or sleeping, or building Daleks. We had a good group of members though, many who helped with the construction of the Wienermobile in some way. (Not picture: Kathy and Kyle, the primary builders! Unfortunately they were out at Burning Man showing off some of their other crazy projects!)
Mat (pictured sitting on the Wiener) served as our driver, providing a demo of the capabilities of the Wienermobile at full throttle. (Reminder: we really need to fix the brakes before driving it again at full throttle!)
Besides all the awesome members who showed up to meet the giant Wiener, we should have a shout-out for Rick, who was busy grilling up Oscar Mayer wieners for us! We all had an early lunch that day, and everybody got to grab a wiener.
Oh yeah, when the Wienermobile is parked outside your makerspace, there’s a good chance the neighbors will notice. A bunch of people who live near the space stopped by, got whistles and stickers, and then got to go inside the Wienermobile. I heard at least three different kids describe it as “COOL!!” and “AWESOME!!”
What can we say? We like big buns and we cannot lie! If you haven’t seen the little Wienermobile in action yet, make sure you visit us at Maker Faire Milwaukee on September 23rd & 24th, 2017 at the Expo Center at State Fair Park. We’ll be racing it against 15 other similarly weird and wild vehicles in the Power Racing Series.
And who knows? Maybe the big Wienermobile will show up again!