 |
| Volo Museum figures! |
Going to Moldfest inspired us to check out an updated Mold-A-Rama/Mold-A-Matic map and see what possible day trips we could manage before summer was up.
We decided first on the Volo Museum, which we knew nothing about except there were cars there. Volo has been on our list of places to collect from for many years, but it's never worked out to fit it in on our way to something else. We finally had to make it a destination all on its own, and wow, that was wild. Exactly the kind of thing we would never have found if it weren't for our Mold-A-Rama collection.
The basic history of the Volo Museum in Volo, Illinois, is that someone owned a chunk of land that he used to open an antique store in a barn, and then found a bunch of old cars on the property that he fixed up which began attracting crowds, so the car restoration business was born, and now the place is essentially a high end classic used car lot. From there, the showrooms started including famous cars from movies and TV on display, and expanded into whatever the owners thought might be cool, so there is a dinosaur area with some live snakes and turtles, a military museum, mini golf, along with a torture museum and some kind of tribute to the Titanic (neither of which we paid to see since they didn't include Mold-A-Ramas). It is eclectic and random and essentially an array of passion projects that includes a carousel. It reminded us of House on the Rock, but with emphasis on cars instead of architecture. It was cheesy and fun and made for an entertaining day.
The cars are beautiful, regardless of whether you find cars interesting.
The price tags on the cars were an amusing touch. At first glance the amount they're asking looks like a steal, but the fine print starts inflating the price dramatically, and all of the cars are expensive, but honestly not as bad as I would have expected considering how rare and interesting they are.
There are four showrooms in the car section of the museum, the last couple containing the movie cars, including the land-speeder from Star Wars, the Delorean from Back to the Future, the Ghostbusters car, and even Christine with its red glowing headlights. (I told the kids how I read Christine in high school and didn't find it scary--until I was walking alone in a parking garage one night and some headlights turned on seemingly by themselves and then I decided yes, Stephen King did in fact know how to write a scary book. I've been a fan ever since.) There are also unexpected displays tucked in corners and in hallways like the Batmobile, Pee Wee's bike, and the jukeboxes from Happy Days. (My favorite part of the Blues Brothers car display was they had a clip playing above it that included the section of the car chase filmed in Milwaukee.)
The Mold-A-Ramas are in the last showroom, and in the Dinosaur park. The ones in the car section of the Volo are originally from Disneyland. They have three, but only two were working. Mickey Mouse and Peter Pan we were able to get from the machines. Goofy we had to buy in the gift shop, and they discounted him a bit because it was the only one left and he was damaged on the bottom.
These were our first Disney figures, and they were expensive! TEN DOLLARS EACH. That's crazy. I mean, I guess we are crazy because we paid it, and specifically traveled there to pay it, but ten dollars is ridiculous. I'm sure it's because they have to pay Disney a license fee to use those images, but yikes. We would never have
started our collection in the first place if they had cost ten dollars a pop. Those original 13 animals we got at our zoo a dozen years ago would have been $130, as opposed to $26. The going rate at most places is currently five dollars, which seems about right to me in 2025. When our own machine is running again, we will probably bump the price up to five.
We liked the way they used the surface under the dome of the Disney machines as a display area for little things. It's got us thinking about stuff we could add to our machine one day. Maybe some real violin parts like pegs and bridges to teach people about violins outside our store?
From the car area, past the carousel room, fighter jet, and snacks, we moved on to the dinosaur park.
 |
| From Avengers, among other things |
There were two figures there (a T-Rex and brontosaurus). They were a much more reasonable $5 apiece.
Once we had collected our figures, we simply explored the grounds until we were tired. I think if we had gone to the Volo Museum when our kids were little, we would have spent most of our time in the dinosaur area. Our kids still got into the sand pit to dig, and it's always good looking at snakes and turtles, but the joy of taking adult kids places is the amount of knowledge they bring to share, and the areas they want to spend more time in are more interesting.
The Volo is laid out as a series of buildings you pass through on your way to the next area. A line on the ground suggests the path you should follow, and there are several places that feel like being tricked into education (especially if you are a small child trying to get to the animatronic band you can hear in the distance). There are covered wagons and vintage speed boats and the history of snow vehicles, but easily the display we spent the most time admiring was the development of the early campers. They were amazing, and our kids were delighted by them and took a ton of photos. The most insane thing inside a camper was the pair of wooden chairs for the front seats along with a full size harp in the back. Fancy dinner music on the road? (If I didn't know of a harp player who travels by camper to perform at various Renaissance Fairs I would dismiss it as unrealistic, but you never know what different people need.)
 |
| Wood stove in a camper! |
Along the way were sensationalized things in every spare bit of space. You really didn't know what to expect around each corner.
I don't imagine us going again, but it was definitely a memorable day trip.
A few days after the visit to the Volo, we took a whole day to drive
out to South Bend, Indiana and back to see the Indiana Dinosaur Museum.
We had wanted to stop there on the way home from our cottage in
Michigan the week before, but then remembered we had the dog with us. (We called to
check, but no dogs allowed.) The dinosaur museum was out of the way, but
our kids are always up for a road trip, so we picked a day everyone was free, dropped Domino off at
doggy daycare at seven in the morning and headed to South Bend.
This
destination was another sort of passion project attached to a rather
unrelated business. The original focus of the site was the South Bend
Chocolate Company. But the people making their money from chocolate were
interested in paleontology, and now there is a dinosaur museum. You
walk into the lobby, and on your right is a cafe where you can buy
chocolate products made on site, and an entrance to the museum that
includes a guided tour of the factory. On the left is a dinosaur gift shop,
and the entrance to a little theater that opens into a dinosaur museum. (They did not offer any chocolate dinosaurs that I could see anywhere, which seems like a missed crossover opportunity.)
Straight out the door at the back of the lobby is the Continental
Divide Trail, which took a minute to understand since when I think of
the continental divide, I think of the ridge out west that includes the
Rocky Mountains. This was a sub-continental divide that was a pretty trail, but a very amusing height marker compared to pretty much
every other place we have hiked up before.
Elevation 840 feet! How did we survive?!
The chocolate museum was interesting. It's always fun to go into a factory and see how things are made, but we weren't allowed to take pictures. The dinosaur museum was surprisingly good. The staff was well informed with lots of good up-to-date information to share. We were expecting something hokey, but the displays were based on solid science and we enjoyed it.
The museum has one Mold-A-Rama available in the lobby, and it's a vintage Sinclair gas station brontosaurus. It's $8 that you pay by buying a token at the desk to use in the machine. It's not as bad as the ten we paid for the Disney figures at the Volo, but eight is still steep.
This figure is a pretty green that's different from anything else in our collection.
We enjoyed lunch at a nice place on the other side of the museum parking lot, and our hike included looking at bison they have there for some reason. We also learned that sometimes baby chicks will pick on one another, which was strange and sad.
A few days after our South Bend trip, we did a comparatively quick drive down to the Brookfield Zoo. They had a wolf figure that was new to us, and we also picked up a few other things that we already had but in new colors.
 |
| Howling orange wolf! |
We have more Mold-A-Ramas from the Brookfield Zoo than anywhere else. It's also arguably the nicest zoo we've ever been to. Always clean, easy to navigate, huge variety, and nice displays.
On this visit we got to enjoy watching dolphins playing with balls underwater, where they would force a ball down into the pool and catch it as it popped back up toward the surface.
There was also this frog with a great face.
When I compare pictures of my kids from our first visit to
Brookfield Zoo in 2013 with the most recent visit, it's astonishing to think how much has happened between then and now.
 |
| 2013, first visit |
 |
| 2025, most recent visit |
I
love that today our Mold-A-Rama collection is more than a mantel of
brightly colored souvenirs, but a tangible way of bookmarking some of
our travels as a family. I'm grateful Quinn looked at the Mold-A-Rama map when she was six and wanted to collect them all, because it gave us a goofy framework on which to build adventures for years and is still going. We would have traveled as a family regardless, but how nice to have these fun waxy figures to help spark so many memories.
(Part of our 225.1 figure collection! If you need an explanation about the ".1" check out this post from 2014.)
