Automoblox > conditioning your kids to love cars
This company, Automoblox, approached me to check out its line of
heirloom quality toy cars, to wit I replied, "You want me to play with toys? Sweet." In all honesty, I have to say
these toy cars are a cut above the plastic crap on Wal-Mart shelves. I really dig the philosophy of the company, which
is that it's better to have one great toy than 10 cheap ones.
The concept behind Automoblox was to create a toy durable enough to last a few generations, interesting enough to tear
your kid away from the TV for more than five minutes, and stimulating enough that children actually grow a brain cell
or two from playing with them.
I was sent the X9 sport utility, although there are five other models including a sports car, sedan, pickup, compact
and sports van. The wooden bodies of each vehicle are made of three parts that are interchangeable, which creates a
kind of kiddie chop shop where new Franken-cars can be created from the individual pieces.
Ive had such a ball playing with this Automoblox car that memories of some great car toys of the past have begun to
resurface. My all-time favorite car toys are a die-cast model of the General Lee with doors and a hood that actually
opened and wheels that turned (older brother broke the hood off), my old Knight Rider big wheel (older brother wore
holes in the plastic wheels from doing spin outs), and my Micro Machines San Francisco playset (the most dangerous toy
I ever owned on account of its dozens of parts on which to choke).
Anyone else remember some great car toys from our youth? Id be interested to know if anyone has saved some car toys
for their own kids to play with.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Doogs 11:07PM (12/18/2005)
We never noticed it until a few years ago, but in every nearly every picture or video of me growing up, I had a car or some type of automobile in my hands.
I remember Hot Wheels cars back when they had metal bodies. Man, those things could really bash up baseboards.
And I remember my big wheel, too. Though it was Dukes of Hazzard. My parents have memories of me being about three and going for broke on it down a steep, tree-ridden hill behind our house in Tennessee. Probably has something to do with my offroading fascination.
And then there were slot cars - with their jumps and loops and squeeze tracks. And remote controlled cars. I remember my first one - a Rick Mears indy car from Tyco. It was outstanding until the front suspension met a curb and shattered.
And that sweet flying Camaro from the cartoon M.A.S.K. And of course...Transformers.
Sadly, not a lot got saved. Garage sales and passalongs and then there was my destructive/pyro phase around twelve or so...
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J Zeke 11:07PM (12/18/2005)
Transformers, namely the autobots were the hot ticket amongst my friends. You had a Porsche 935, a Kenworth, 2 Lamborghini Countachs and a Yellow VW Beetle that became walking robots... The Decepticons were doomed!
Lego had those fantastic "chassis" kits that had working 4 speed transmissions, 8 cylinders, fully independant wishbone suspension, adjustable seats and countless other features all made of fairly standardized parts I wish I still had that one.
On a tangential note, these toys will help push cars into modular forms that have been talked about for decades. While boomers now might be stuck dreaming of GNXs and GTOs, these kids will be comfortable with the idea of truly mixing and matching cars.
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JS 11:07PM (12/18/2005)
More Micro Machines here. Also I used to create crazy vehicles of destruction and speed with every imaginable type of weapon on them out of Lego's and go terrorize the citizens of the city I built....I even went so far as to create an AirWolf helicopter to get the whole "death from above" thing going....Ah the good ole' days.
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Rich 11:07PM (12/18/2005)
Here is the story behind the development of automoblox:
http://www.core77.com/reactor/02.05_automoblox.asp
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AutoSupplierNews 11:07PM (12/18/2005)
We played with Matchbox cars in East Germany in the late 1970s.
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AutoSupplierNews 11:07PM (12/18/2005)
This was my favorite Matchbox car:
http://rimg.vatera.hu/photos/langs/hu/143063/300/1220805.jpg
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Dog 11:07PM (12/18/2005)
The best in my opinion was a toy line designed with the idea of a toy in the hands of kids like myself who like to take the meaning of the word "abuse" to the next level....
Tonka.
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Sean Flanagan 11:07PM (12/18/2005)
I had GoBots instead of Transformers, and not because my parents wouldn't buy me the Transformers. I liked the GoBots better because they were almost all cars. Because of them, I could identify a Toyota Supra (it was a cop car too!) or a Porsche 911 before I could pronounce the word "phonics" (long story).
I also had MicroMachines, including the infamous San Francisco playset, the auto carrier, and the airplane; as well as probable hundreds of Hot Wheels and Matchbox (I had a Shell F1 Matchbox car that was my favorite).
I still have (assembled and intact sitting proudly on a shelf) the Lego Model Team F1 car, from years before Lego started teaming up with actual F1 teams to recreate their cars in Lego form.
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geigs 11:07PM (12/18/2005)
The 200+ cars I had growing up have made it to the next generation. All are in very good shape. Now my four-year-old son has LeCar, Javelin, Firebird, Poison Pinto, and the first "world" car-the Escort. The nice thing about the old cars is that they have doors that open, suspensions that bounce, and motors that bob up and down.
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brian 11:07PM (12/18/2005)
i still have a bucket of Micro Machines, along with the aircraft carrier, cargo plane, semi truck , and several other odd sets and two paper-ream-boxes full of legos stored at my parents' house for future generations. Hell, sometimes when i'm there, i play with them!
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naggs 11:07PM (12/18/2005)
transformers, ninja turtles (espically the turtly van that shot pizza discs at the footsolders. but my favorite toy has to be the pedal powered plastic car. best toy ever, you could get it up to 20 mph and cut the wheel and slam on the breaks and the solid plastic wheels would slide and the thing would spin like a top. i cant imagine a better toy. best part was it cost about $50.
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Joseph Willemssen 11:07PM (12/18/2005)
"Automoblox > conditioning your kids to love cars"
Right, because there just aren't enough commercials and associated societal messages out there conditioning our children to have an unnatural attachment to automobiles.
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