#201 – Vroom
Posted on September 12, 2011 at 12:00 am by Chris
Chapter: Comic
I had lots of Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars as a kid. My brother and I would spend hours and hours setting up tracks to race them and see how far we could get them to jump. We had so many of those little cars that they never felt precious or special. Crashing them was half the fun. Consequently, my Hot Wheels car collection is something that will not be handed down to my son. It would pretty much just be a box full of jagged metal and crumbling plastic.
Today’s Biff will sleep on the couch.
I definitely remember crashing Hot-wheels cars. I even hit them with Dad’s hammer for that real smashed up effect.
About 10 years ago Hotwheels introduced wreckable cars that could be fixed with a single “click.” They would “break” at certain predetermined points, then you could slide, snap, or rotate them back to normal.
I had some of those as a kid and that was… uh… longer than ten years ago. 🙂
Yeah, I remember having a couple of those, with little spring-loaded panels that would flip over to the “damaged” side on impact. This would have been back in the early or mid-eighties, so, yeah, more than ten years…
In the 70s, the damaged spring-loaded panels just flew off and got lost.
Battle Damage He-Man!
Come one! Who survives with axe marks in their sternum?
Hot-wheels were a big part of my childhood too. Except I rarely used them on the track. As for the smashed-upped look, well several of them were a bit flatter after I left them out and they got stepped on by various family members. It takes several times though to start noticing any difference.
Back in my early childhood, there was Kenner’s “SSP Smash-Up Derby” cars that were self-propelled shrapnel grenades. Pull the ripcord and Zoom! it would head for its destruction.
They went back together after, although the more you used them the less tight the connections. Eventually the pieces started falling off before any contact with impediments, ethereal or not.
An old ad: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyoUcofBo9I&NR=1
Neat! I would have loved those!
Not to worry, Chris. Mattel still makes the Hot Wheels line and still re-issues it’s older/”Classic” cars every decade or so, so your grandkids will probably have the chance to play with — and eventually wreck — the same cars that you did.
I remember those too; one panel had a ‘smashed’ side and the other was normal. they had front, side, and back crashes. I think they were called Crack-Ups or something.
I also remember the ripcord-powered smash-up derby cars from the 70’s woth parts that would fly off when they crashed! ahh, those were the days…
Infrapinklizzard, you had those too?