So quoth Welsh indie rockers the Super Furry Animals in the late '90s - probably their best song, all told. Saw them with Custard and Eskimo Joe at the then-new Roundhouse Bar at UNSW about ten years back. Can't remember a fucking thing about their set. Dare say it was something to do with the $2.50 bottles of then-also-new Tooheys Pils. What was I on about? Yeah, the man don't give a fuck. The man in question being our little man Lucas, all two years and one month of him, who lost an argument with a playground slide over the weekend and is now sporting a fibreglass cast up his left leg to the top of the thigh. He spent about half an hour whinging about it, then set about figuring out how he could maintain his upwardly mobile lifestyle (well sidewardly mobile at least) with what appears to be a lower limb off the Michelin Man attached to his person. He has done bugger-all complaining, a lot of nonchalant grinning, and has been an absolute star through the whole procedure. I am less convinced by the day that he is actually a New Zealander and am wondering whether Dr Mrs Dr Yobbo is actually his mother. Biologically unlikely I would agree, particularly considering I was in the room when... some unpleasantness occurred which I won't go into. Dads-to-be, be warned. I was there. I was that soldier.
Anyway, I was in New Zealand's leading retailer of plastic crap parallel-imported from China, shopping for toy cars as a reward for dealing with the whole leg in plaster thing - and wondering whether I should get some for Lucas as well - when the thought hit me that the Matchbox and Hot Wheels cars I was looking at were exactly the same price, or near as dammit, as they were when I was a young fullah, say twenty to twenty-five years ago. I can't think of anything else which hasn't gone up in price in the last twenty years. (We'll leave the Reserve Bank floating interest rate out of this discussion as that shit just be weird.) Even real cars - an '89 Falcodore cost about $22K, compared with their current equivalents' list price of mid to high thirties - not withstanding some of the deals being thrown at punters to shift metal off forecourts on Parra Road and the Moorooka Mile these days ($7K off a V8 SS-V Sportwagon? Bring it.) Yet the Hot Wheels cars I bought Lucas yesterday - '08 first editions, Shelby Mustangs and Dodge Hemi Challengers and shit - each cost $2.89 NZ. I'm sure I was paying $2.95 Strayan in hard-earned pocket money for Matchbox cars back in the day.
It didn't take long to figure out why Mattel were still in business despite one of their main product lines decreasing markedly in price in real dollar terms. Modern examples of the breed have the production values of an early episode of Red Dwarf (holy fuck, they're making a new two-part Red Dwarf special! Rimmer will need a zimmer! Anyhoo.) The doors and bonnet (hood to you Seppos) no longer open. Maybe they never did on Hot Wheels cars, I can't remember, but the paint's thinner, and the things seem smaller too, or maybe that's just my massive useless neanderthal man-hands forgetting the scale of things from when I was a lil' tacker. But they still look fucking cool, especially those new retro-look US muscle cars (yeah I'm a sucker for those muscle car rebuild shows on Discovery Channel. Someone build me up a first-gen Camaro with a shaker hood and a blown small block - or better still a Strayan HQ Monaro GTS two-door with all of the above.) And hey, if it means getting other-parental-OK to waste money on toy cars to race down our Mega Bloks racetrack, perhaps the lad might be willing to arrange a few more unfortunate accidents?
No. Of course I'm not serious (if that's you, CYFS, DOCS or Other Local Equivalent) and the mere insinuation is so ridiculous it's offensive. How dare you, etc. But if he decides to take up snowboarding, motocross or fast bowling, that's entirely his prerogative.
The Doctor is OUT to see whether Hemi Challengers are faster than Shelby Mustangs. Gravitationally speaking at least.
8 comments:
I gave my nephew the tracks & cars i had as a kid. The tracks fit my old cars and his new cars. He got a new track. The old cars don't fit the new track.
AND they all seem to be made of mostly plastic, so when you run over them with your adult car or stand on them with your adult feet, they break into tiny pieces, not like in my day when you could throw bricks at them (to simulate a bombing campaign) and they would keep on going.
Hmmm....Monaro GTS...good times, good times.
My second cousin broke his leg a couple of times as a teenager. Really nasty stuff.
When I visited him in hospital he was playing with the cool radio controlled car his parents brought for him.
I spent the next six months jumping off stuff trying to break my leg.
Glad to hear that Master Yobbo is swiflty recovering from his ordeal.
The birth advice post was especially good.
(Third try. Get it right you idiot...)
Yeah, the Guide to Important Bloke Stuff... revisiting that at the moment, currently halfway through gestation of YobSpawn II: The Revenge. The Billy Connolly reference is ironic, we're off to see him tonight, should be a good show hopefully.
Re track construction we've found the best investment to be a mega-pack of gaffa tape from Mitre 10, so we can stick all the various types of track together and really go silly with it (the royal we meaning me of course. Lucas occasionally gets a go.
Sadly no Monaro GTS in my actual car history, though the first car I can remember my old man having - other than the VW Golf which my mother pedalled - was a HG Kingswood ute with a 253 V8. Later in my childhood he went to the dark side and got himself a '71 Fairlane with a 351 Cleveland V8 in the 'wanted' mission brown. He later said you should never actually go out and buy the cars you thought you wanted when you were younger. A mate of his DID have a Monaro GTS, one of the first two-doors - but it was a 186 six-cylinder with three-on-the-tree auto. 'Lame as fuck' doesn't even begin to describe the concept. The Brown Hornet would have dusted it. Mind you if it was still around it would have been the perfect starting point for disembowelling and replacing the innards with good stuff like on those muscle car shows on cable.
Monaro, Torana XU1, GTHO. 'Scuse me, I need to go sniff something.
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