Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Little Boys and Big Trucks

Smiley checked out another book about trucks from the library.  It has one photograph of a monster truck jumping on cars.  This confused Smiley, but after a bit of searching I finally found an acceptable YouTube video about two big trucks driving on cars (the link starts the video in the middle).

Now he knows the following facts:
1. Broken cars get taken on tow trucks to mechanics who fix them.  (He thinks this plan works for any broken car.)
2. Monster trucks jump in cars and break them.

So now Smiley is eager to see monster trucks in person, but mostly because he wants to see tow trucks in action.

He does not want to see our car get badly broken.  But he also knows that broken cars make funny noises, and a couple times he has expressed the wish that our car would also make funny noises so it could go on a tow truck and visit the mechanic.



Speaking of trucks with big tires, when I was a little boy, one of my favorite toys was a Matchbox Rough Riders 4x4 that I think was supposed to be a brown Jeep Cherokee.  (A very similar toy was called Stompers.)

Their motto was "You can try to stop 'em", and although designing an obstacle course that did stop them was easy, it was dumploads of fun to see how dramatic an obstacle course could be built that they could navigate.  It was also a prime travel toy, since it was small enough to pack easily and a relative's home or hotel room would have new things with which to construct a novel obstacle course.

A slow but steady battery-powered car seems such an obvious toy that I was surprised how hard it was to find one for Smiley.  Matchbox now sells the Power Scouts, which are quite inferior because they have much less clearance under the chassis.

(The Power Scouts are less expensive at the local toy store, although I notice that Amazon has a model with treads that might be worth a few extra dollars.)

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