Okay, so I admit it. I was a Hot Wheels junkie when I was kid. I had some Matchbox cars, but Hot Wheels was where it was at. I used to spend hours on rainy days building tracks across the living room or down the basement stairs. (That never ended well…too steep) I used to endlessly “test drive” all of my cars and rate them best to worst….the best obviously got played with ….the worst were destined for a life in the bottom of the 50 car case.
We had a humidifer in the hallway of the house that I grew up in. (I was raised in the Midwest but for some reason we would ADD humidity to rooms. It still seems strange.) This humidifier was 4 feet tall by 1.5 feet wide. It had a wheel inside that apparently had something to do with the humidity. It proved to be the perfect car storage facility, however, and I used to get scolded daily when my dad would clean out the 6 or so cars that had fallen to the bottom of the reservoir.
When I left for college my mom had a garage sale and proceeded to sell my precious cars as well as some Star Wars collectibles and my Atari 2600. This would be a point of contention between us for years to come. : ) So ended the Hot Wheels love affair. For a while.
When I learned Heather was pregnant with Christian in 1996, I decided to re-obtain these cars of my youth in hopes of igniting that passion in my little boy. It worked. He loved them when he was a little guy, stacking and racing them on the floors of our house. All the of the guys loved them at one time or another. But then they discovered video games and all that ended. Once again, the cars were shelved away and forgotten about. Until yesterday.
While at Toys R Us, Heather bought some track pieces and jumps and stuff and the guys and proceeded to have a blast racing those cars down the stairs (still too steep) and all over the place. It was great to unplug for a while. No TV, no video games? Who would have thought you could still have fun without those things.
That car is about .0001 seconds from hitting me in the forehead. Pretty awesome, huh?
~ by mszczep on July 22, 2008.
Posted in family fun
TV and video games are where it’s at, yo! (Haha, just kidding, I loved Hot Wheels when I was a kid too! I would always pretend they were the flying cars from Back To The Future II.)
Yeah, Hot Wheels were bomb. Matchbox was like the wannabe competitor that great aunts would buy who didn’t know better. My favorite was the smokey and the bandit-esque black firebird that I had in the late 70’s. Now every time zack goes home with me he grabs a few more cars out the toys bin my dad keeps. All VERY old stuff from my childhood. So cool. And I still have a hugh box of comics and baseball cards from the 80’s.
Explanation on the humidifier: In winter, furnace created dry heat upstairs, so to prevent sore throats, we’d have the THREE foot tall humidifier upstairs, and a DEhumidifier downstairs! Thanks for the reminder on HW coolness. Nuther thing to do with Michael!