What’s In The Suitcase? Day Twelve

General

I wasn’t the kid on the block with all the cool toys. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t wearing burlap rags and pretending a shoe box was my best friend, no. Being the youngest of 5 kids meant most of my toys were either generic (Look! A farm set of no discernible brand!) or worn out hand me downs that passed through years of abuse from 4 older siblings (Wee! A Spirograph with 75% of the gear wheels missing!). Don’t get me wrong, I was a happy kid. But I lived next door to an only son of a wealthy lawyer. You could imagine what his toy box looked like. He had enough LEGO to make the engineers of the Burj Dubai seethe with jealousy. He was so ignorant of how good he had it. For example, he had die cast metal SHADO vehicles but didn’t know a thing about the show they came from, which drove me crazy. When I tried to explain to my parents that I needed a SHADO Mobile with real firing missiles from the British science fiction show UFO I got a farm set of no discernible brand.

I also remember a friend having a ride-’em toy that made me insanely jealous. The name escapes me. It was round, you sat in the middle and it had two major wheels on either side of you that you cranked for motion. It was the closest a kid could come to wheel chair fun without stealing a wheel chair. I also recall the wheels had a hippy, swirly pattern on them…

I digress. All this just to say I got my first Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots game when I was 41. Hell of a time to wait.

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6 thoughts on “What’s In The Suitcase? Day Twelve”

  2. Jim M

    Thanks.

    My Neighbor had one. I couldn’t remember the name either but as soon as you mentioned it I Googled “1970 riding toy big wheels crank” and sure enough it was one of the top hits.

    I never made the wheelchair connection before but, holy crap, you’re right! I guess it’s only fun as long as you can get up and walk away.

    I always wanted a Green Machine, until I actually rode one and realized just how impossible it was to ride.

    In honor of you, I changed my Facebook profile picture this morning.

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