Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes

ST. GEORGE — As a kid, I would sometimes take up the entire basement family room with orange Hot Wheel tracks, trying to create the most elaborate road systems possible for my small diecast cars and hotrods.

Alternatively, I would set up parallel track systems starting from a high point in the room so I could race my cars two at a time and determine which was fastest in single-elimination tournaments.

But my efforts, I find, pale in comparison to a southern Utah Hot Wheel enthusiast who creates elaborate track systems that take the small autos that traverse them more than a minute to complete. A car could probably travel the amateur track systems I made in my younger days in a couple seconds.

BrutalMenace, as he is known, posts his track creations on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok, running a car down them fitted with a camera that films the action. Somehow, the cars don't crash — at least in the videos he posts — offering the view of the toy auto as it careens around sharp corners, down drops, through loops and tunnels and more.

In the most recent post earlier this month, a car starts high above a kitchen on track somehow suspended in midair as BrutalMenace, standing amid the course, does some sort of dance step. It zooms through the living room as it goes down, gaining momentum, then races out a window into the home's yard. It continues on track supported by all manner of items, including ladders, a crate and what appears to be scrap pieces of drywall or some other type of housing material.

It goes through loops and seems to get extra oomph at points when it starts losing speed with boosters along the track. Finally, the track system and car leave the yard of the home, crossing a nearby street and ending in an adjacent field.

"Would you ride this roller coaster?" reads a message at the start of the video. Otherwise, BrutalMenace doesn't say much, letting the elaborate orange track systems and careening cars do all the talking.

"We build EPIC Hot Wheels tracks, collect diecast cars and share what we find," reads the description of his YouTube page. The only clue about his whereabouts, in fact, comes in his TikTok videos, tagged to show they come from St. George in southern Utah.

Plenty of people, though, offer their comments, alternatively waxing nostalgic about their youth and wondering about BrutalMenace's priorities.

"Okay, I'll admit I watched the whole thing. But you, sir, have too much time on your hands and way too much Hot Wheels track!" wrote one TikTok commenter.

"Brooo ... I haven't been this excited since I was 10 yrs old," wrote another.

My son has a few Hot Wheel tracks, even some of my old cars. Maybe it's time to invest in a few more pieces of track.