Hooray for Happy Meals!

As you may have heard, the California city of  Nutberg  San Francisco has decided to ban toys from children's' meals at fast-food restaurants.  The foremost realization that people have from this is that, once again, a governmental body populated by leftists is dangerously intrusive, both in business/client relations and, more frighteningly, in the realm of parental responsibility.

However, there's a secondary issue here as well, which SanFran seems (blindly) willing to ban: fun.  Specifically, children having simple fun with simple toys.  The toys one finds in children's meals are usually very simplistic, with little mechanization and rarely with any electronic features.  These toys are usually aimed at younger children (as are the meals themselves), and serve not only to give a child a memento of a favorite movie or television character, but also stimulate a child's imagination and creativity.  That is, enjoyment of the toy must come from the child's mind, since most such toys actually "do" very little.  (I find this a pleasant contrast to the fact that many older, pre-teen children as well as teenagers seem to be welded to the various electronic gadgets available today, to the detriment of their being able to enjoy physically demanding games such as Operation or Mouse Trap.)

There are several younger children in my family, and something they greatly enjoy when visiting is the Tin full of Tiny Toys®.  This is a tin, formerly full of holiday popcorn (more junk food!  YES!), but which is now quite full of small, easily-handled (easily-misplaced, and easily-stepped-on-later) toys, many of which are of course "kids' meal" toys.  So, let me now present to you, in direct opposition to the City of San Francisco, the following

CELEBRATON OF "KIDS' MEAL" TOYS!

This first photo is of the three unique toys in the tin; unique in that each of these toys is the only one from a given fast-food franchise.  L to R: Porky Pig Christmas ornament, Arby's; Star Trek: Deep Space Nine mini beach ball, Dairy Queen; Nacho & Dog basketball game, Taco Bell.  (By the way, just to be clear, this article is about fast-food toys in general, as a broad concept; that's why there aren't any portraits or multi-views of any one specific toy.)  Porky here literally doesn't do anything; he's a Christmas ornament (look close, you'll see the eyelet atop his hat); yet the kids certainly enjoy playing with him -- even if it's sometimes just as a bowling pin.  The ST:DS9 ball, when inflated, represents a starfield and has a cutout of the U.S.S. Defiant hanging (i.e., "floating" or "hovering") inside.  The basketball game is the  most involved: the little plastic basketball sits in one of several pockets along the front edge of the game; the child slides the yellow launcher tab under the ball, then releases the tab which springs the ball toward the clear plastic hoop.  The trick is not so much in aiming but in springing the tab with the right amount of force.  Too little, the ball just falls back to the pockets; too much, the ball ricochets around the game's shell.  By the way, it is possible to make a basket in this game.  I know.  I have done this.

A number of toys from Burger King kids' meals.  Obviously several Disney characters here.  The blue garbage truck on the right is from CatDog.  The green rectangular do-hickey in the back is a magic trick fashioned to look like a remote control (from a series of animated commercials).  Specifically, it's a truly basic version of the Vanishing Closet trick: slide open the drawer; insert a small object; close the drawer; wave hands and chant over trick; re-open drawer to show that small object is now gone.  Oh, and make sure you tip the trick in the right direction, and chant loudly enough to cover the mechanical click caused by tipping the trick.  ("What mechanical click?  Nothing to see here, folks.  Move along now, move along.")

Several toys from McDonald's Happy Meals.  Yes, City of San Francisco, I said MCDONALD'S HAPPY MEALS.  The tall gray dude in back is Megatron from Transformers: Animated (and for that, I apologize).  Before him are the Penguin car, Batmobile and Cat Woman car from Batman Returns (and you can see that the Penguin and Cat Woman vehicles look exactly like they did in the movie.  I mean, exactly).  In the lower left and right corners are a Big Mac and a Chicken McNugget pack which both transform into dinosaurs.  (Now that's freaky.  ...Considering what they smoke out there, you'd think the SanFrannies would totally be okay with meal toys [Oh, hey, I just realized this as I'm typing: these dinos are literally meal toys!].)  And front and center is that well-conceived marketing character, Mac Tonight.  Yes, aside from certain breakfast cereal mascots, there's no character in American marketing more successfully tied to his product in the minds of Americans that  Ronald McDonald  Mac Tonight.  Ask anyone you know whom they think of when you mention McDonald's, and it's guaranteed the answer will be  Ronald McDonald  Mac Tonight.

Ah, now here is the realm where I am king: Hot Wheels cars from McDonald's Happy Meals.  There's a long history between Hot Wheels and McDonald's, going back to at least the late 1970s.  Such cars fall generally into three categories:
1) mainline Hot Wheels cars (that is, cars that are the same models available in stores;
2) cars that are variations of mainline cars (different names, different features, etc.); and
3) "That's a Hot Wheels car?!!?".
Clockwise from lower left, we have Rivited, Thunderblade, Firestorm, Bold Eagle, Alien Crossers (green and blue), 2K57 Glo-Rider, and I Candy.  Half these models fall into the "variation" category: each is based on an existing mainline model, yet has distinct differences from the original.  For example, this I Candy is in detail a perfect duplicate of its mainline model ... but is noticeably larger.  Hot Wheels are described (inaccurately) as "1/64th scale"; this version seems to be the in the 1/50th scale range.  Why would Mattel produce a larger version of a model for which it already had standard-size dies?  To quote Peter Venkman: "I don't know."  Oh, by the way, Rivited and I Candy do a trick!  Watch!  ...Let me just ... find the switch here...

Boo-yaaahh!!  Hot Wheels on FIRE, baby!

So, thus ends my little tribute to kids' meal toys -- with a photo of two toy cars which, for no important reason, have red LEDS inside, with sealed batteries I can't replace when they go flat.  And thus it's very clear at this point that this is EXACTLY THE WAY TO COMBAT THE ASSAULT ON KIDS' MEAL TOYS!!!!!  Or perhaps it isn't.  Anyway, I had fun writing about my toys, you had fun reading about them, and that's what counts: we had fun.  So, take your family out to your favorite (or nearest) fast-food place, buy your kids a kids' meal each, wave the included toys in the general direction of San Francisco and go "Nyaah-nyaah!", and most of all enjoy spending time with your kids.  Teach them about our Constitution, teach them that there's a big difference between having a simple set of rules and having self-important dimwits trying to regulate everyone's life, and set aside time to have real fun, like running around outside, playing ball, playing together at family boardgames, playing with Hot Wheels or G. I. Joes (or playing with Hot Wheels and G. I. Joes -- now that rocks!).  Shut off the PlayStation, the Wii and the Atari 2600 (huh?!?), and show your kids how to have fun with real toys and real equipment while playing with real friends outside.  Me?  I'm gonna go get a McRib.

Classic Christmas Plastic

About twelve years ago or so, on a message board I had been frequenting, a woman had started a discussion in which she was lamenting the state of modern figural Christmas decorations. She opined that (then-)current figures seemed primarily to be either over-detailed plastic that was lifeless for all its detail, or bland, nearly featureless ceramic. Now, I certainly don’t have any prejudices against modern Christmas ornaments, as the example below will prove:


(Okay, perhaps that’s even ultra-modern.) But that discussion got me thinking about my favorite ornaments and decorations from my childhood, some of which I still have and use. I realized that there’s a certain simplicity in those older designs that’s lost in today’s well-crafted models. No less mass-manufactured than today’s ornaments, the ones from my childhood (the ‘60s and early ‘70s, just for reference), were representations of basic Christmas elements, such as Santa, snowmen, reindeer, and of course the Nativity. These elements are of course seen in modern decorations as well, but they’re often over-stylized or, if I may, overly cutesy. Further, today’s “Christmas” ornaments are very likely to be something from entertainment or pop culture (as the photo of the U.S.S. Reliant above attests), related to Christmas only in their packaging and seasonal arrival on the shelves.

Too Much of a Good Thing, Literally
Here’s an example of the “bland ceramic” school of Christmas ornamentation: an middle-aged couple seated on a park bench; just to the right is a vignette of a deer and fawn drinking in a woodland stream.


Now, neither one is particularly bland; in fact the seated couple is reasonably well-painted, and the bench is designed quite nicely. To be honest, I own many such “Christmas village“ decorations. However, as I was preparing this article, I realized that, around Christmastime, such figurines are the very definition of ubiquitous. You can find these all over the place. I’ve seen them at Dollar Tree, Walgreens, K-mart, Ace Hardware and Lowes. If you want to create a Victorian- or Dickensian-era Christmas village (with the occasional anachronistic ‘40s/’50s-era pickup or family sedan), you have an abundance of choices among figures, buildings and accessories.

It is this ready supply of such decorations that is the problem. It’s as if there were no other era in history during which Christmas was celebrated. The manufacturers of the “Christmas village” items continue to bring out new little people doing different little things each year, which can make for a richly-detailed village layout, but it’s done at the expense of Christmas itself. Many of the figures and accessories are not so much “Christmasy” as they are “wintery”. Further, more and more seem to be simply “person doing a particular task”. For example, two of the shops available at K-mart this year were a bookstore and an art studio, with separate “matching” figures and accessories. They were, respectively, a man examining books on a bookshelf, and a woman gazing at a painting on an easel. By the way, these are designed to be seen, thus they stand outside the shops, as if it’s a Victorian sidewalk sale. While the buildings may have detail to represent snow or even colored lights, these two characters have nothing to do with the holiday beyond being “dressed warmly”. (Another such example, which I own (and like), is a “hayride”, a horse-drawn wagon with several kids playing among the piles of hay in the wagon. Very attractive, but it’s not strictly a Christmas image. In fact, it could be seen as a Fall item, rather than Winter, and could serve for Thanksgiving as well as Christmas.)

As I said, I do own many “Christmas village” figurines and buildings, and I will hang on to certain ones for several more years. However, very many of them have lost their cuteness over time, simply due to the fact that I’ve realized that quaint does not equal Christmas. The large vignette of a woman hailing a ride from a Hansom cab, while attractively sculpted, does not explicitly represent Christmas. It really caught my eyes when I first bought it several years ago, but now I can easily give it away without regret, and in fact would appreciate not having it packed away and taking up space for eleven months out of the year.

Just One Word: Plastics
Full disclosure: As with the ceramic “Christmas village” items above, I own a large number of modern, highly-detailed and/or highly-stylized ornaments and decorations made of high-impact plastic. Each in its turn was sufficiently cool, wicked, awesome or oh-so-darn cute as to warrant purchase. Over time, many have lost my interest because they either don’t represent Christmas, or don’t represent it well enough. (Note to those who are drooling in anticipation: No, I will not be getting rid of my Hallmark Star Trek ship ornaments; they totally rock.)

Here’s a typical Hallmark item -- or maybe American Greetings or Enesco -- that represents the modern detailed plastic ornament. Nicely crafted, lots of detail, and certainly eye-catchingly colorful. There are various textures: the man’s beard, the woman’s hair, and the boughs of the trees. Texturing along the side of the sleigh is actually a series of embossed snowflakes. If you look closely, you can even see individual “pages” of the book upon which the sleigh rests. (Also, the “cover” of the book has debossed holly leaves which are stained to give the look of a fabric covering.)


Clearly this ornament at least actually represents Christmas. Further, the “cover” of the book says Jingle Bells. So here we not only have a literal Christmas connection; there’s also an element of Christmas fantasy, as the “one-horse open sleigh” rises up out of the pages.

Yet, as I look at this item, there’s a certain lack of liveliness to it, despite the “action pose” of the horse. There’s a dullness to the colors. The man’s hands, though fully sculpted with distinct fingers and thumbs, aren’t even designed to hold the reigns. (Maybe his hands are frozen, and all he can do is press the reigns against his lap?) Finally, while the woman’s face is sculpted with a pleasant-enough appearance, the man looks like a Tellarite from the old Star Trek series.

Therein lies the problem with the modern plastic Christmas ornament: For all its rich detail and often vibrant colors, there’s a lifelessness, a coldness in the modern ornament that belies the intended festive spirit of the design. Better designed -- dare I say better engineered? -- than the ornaments from my youth, and certainly made with higher-quality materials; yet it’s the simplicity -- dare I suggest cheapness? -- of those older ornaments that make them so endearing.

By the way, I’m keeping the sleigh ornament above. It’s dated 1999, so this is its 10-year anniversary. Also, turns out it’s not from any of the companies I mentioned above -- an eye loupe revealed that it’s Eckerd branded. So, I’m keeping it because it’s also a reminder of an element lost from the fabric of Americana.

Ring in the Old
The biggest problem with the old ornaments is of course survivability. Aside from normal wear and tear, as well as the occasional accident, some of the older materials simply don’t age well. Here’s one that’s several decades old.


Santa himself doesn’t look too bad; aside from worn, faded paint, he’s in good physical shape, and has reasonable detail. But look at the jumbled white mess to his lower left. That’s all that’s left of his sleigh. It was an attractive design, looking as if it were made of lace. It’s simply a soft plastic, or maybe an early vinyl, and was simply a flat piece that was folded up into an open-face box. I had an idea of flattening out the sleigh and gluing it to some clear plastic sheeting of some sort to provide support, then scoring the sheeting so I could fold the sleigh back into shape. However, when I took it out of storage this year and tried to adjust the sleigh on the tree, an entire side came of in my hand. Santa is still reusable, but after the decorations are taken down I’ll have to separate the sleigh from him and just throw it away.

Since I’ve rediscovered the simple joy inherent in the older ornaments, I’ve been collecting them -- or perhaps rescuing them -- from garage sales, thrift stores and the like. However, having gone crazy with various collections over the years, I‘ve learned my lesson. Thus, I do not buy an old Christmas ornament simply because it‘s old. It has to be in decent shape, reasonably priced and, most importantly, have that indefinable something that gives it the right “retro” or “classic” feel I’m looking for. At a church White Elephant sale a couple of years ago I found two such ornaments. Here’s the blue one, employed on my tree:


A simple yet very effective Christmas cameo.

So what goes into the making of such an ornament? It starts with a simple geometric shell. The front half is colored translucent plastic, with cutouts. The back half has a vacuum-metallized coating similar in color to the front half, with a debossed star detail.


At least, I think it’s vacuum-metallized. Such a coating tends to fade or even peel over time, yet this one is still in very good condition. So, maybe it’s a different process.

The cameo is a marvel of simplicity. A simple, nearly flat representation of a deer, with two pieces of foliage which represent pine are attached to a post jutting forward from the interior of the back section. Hmm… That interior is still really, really reflective. I’m suspecting that’s a higher-grade process than vacuum metallization.



Here’s a close-up of the deer. As you can see, it’s barely more than a silhouette, yet it does the trick very nicely.



And here’s the ornament, reassembled. Only five simple pieces, of modest materials. Yet all together they make what is in my opinion an incredibly attractive, and very Christmasy, traditional ornament. Yes, I have many very modern Christmas ornaments, and yes, I’ll be keeping many of those many for, um, many years. But I will also continue to appreciate -- and gather, as I can -- the classic and retro ornaments that seem to do a much better job of making spirits bright. I hope to revisit this subject in future posts. But for now, let me wish you a happy and healthy 2010, and may Yeshua bless you and yours mightily this year. And to my fellow collectors -- Happy Hunting!

The one that made me a collector....

Greetings and welcome to ToyCarGuy's Hot Heaps!: a blog celebrating the hobby of collecting 1/64-scale cars (as well as other toys 'n stuff, on occasion). Please be sure to visit the website of my club, Suncoast Diecasters, Pinellas County's friendliest collect-'n-trade club. Now, about this first post...


Some time in 2008, during a family gathering, one of my young nephews asked me what is my favorite Hot Wheels car. I thought about it for a moment or two, wondering to myself if I even actually had an answer. Turns out I did. It's the one that first made me consciously seek out specific Hot Wheels models.


Oh, I had, of course, pretty much always had Hot Wheels cars during my childhood. Beatnik Bandit, Hot Heap, Deora, Red Baron (I think everyone had a Red Baron back then -- I think they were issued out as part of a mandatory government program). And I recall having at least one Hot Wheels catalog, with names like Boss Hoss and Heavy Chevy and Roger Dodger. And I seem to recall telling Mom or Dad, Boy I sure would like that one!, and probably getting one of the standard generic parental responses. But then ... there was that commercial.


The year was 1977. Star Wars came out. Oh, we kids went crazy. But before that ... there was that commercial. A commercial for new Hot Wheels models. A commercial with designs that caught our young attentions so readily, we kids actually talked about it on weekend get-togethers. Yeah, serious: we talked about a commercial! "Did you see that new ad for Hot Wheels? Man, those new models are wild!"


There was Spoiler Sport, a kind of futuristic-looking van; the GMC Motorhome, with its rich orange color and groovy palm tree decal (we didn't know the word "tampo" back then); oh, and Odd Rod, this weird half-breed dragster, a t-bucket in back and a rail-bird up front, with this crazy clear shell over the rail section.


And then ... there was the Doozie. The '31 Doozie. That one just made my little mind light up like nothin' else. Long and lean; rich orange with brown and tan; that long hood and those curly side pipes. A true classic. A truly beautiful classic. Yeah, it was the Doozie. A design from literally decades before I was even born. That's the one that changed me from "Hey, Mom, can I get a Hot Wheels car today?" to "I want that one."




Oh, yeah, it's pock-marked and discolored; it's showing its age.



But it's still a very handsome design. By Larry Wood, no less.



Like most little boys, I had an instinctive desire to take things apart to see how they worked (there's probably also a sub-conscious desire to see if it can be put back together and still work). I recognized that the '31 Doozie was a convertible, so naturally I popped the canopy off to see how it looked "top down". (Dig that interior windscreen! How upper-class is that!) And of course I was greatly relieved to learn the canopy could easily be snapped back into place! Further, I was happy to discover that the canopy could be installed backwards to act as an airfoil.



Now, at this point you may be wondering, why would I want the canopy to act as an airfoil? Here's the thing: as a child, I was blessed with an outrageously wild imagination (which pretty much still operates in that mode, by the way). And this wild imagination informed me that you need the canopy to act as an airfoil ... when you're cruising around in Turbo Mode!