Go ahead, bring the kids!

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Where to go when the kids you’ve taken to the L.A. Auto Show start whining that they’re bored? Here are a few tips for when the cars stop doing the trick:

Toyota’s exhibit has two video games. One is ‘Professional Fishing Challenge,’ in which players face a video screen and apparently use a lifelike fishing rod to try to hook a big catch. The other is the ‘Tundra’ game, in which players drive a truck around a rural area, picking up rocks and hay bales and whatnot. One hopes that the real Tundras have better steering than the video Tundras, which didn’t seem to want to turn left or right (but also didn’t crumple when you crashed them into things).

Next door, the sister Scion brand has transformed the back hatch of an orange Fire Axis Design 2008 xD Widebody into a carnival-style claw game, with players vying to pluck yellow, orange and red plush Scion toys out of the rear compartment.

Over at Ford, show-goers can stand in front of a green screen and get their pictures taken. Your image is then magically inserted into a photo postcard of a Mustang, cruising in front of some palm trees, along the coast at sunset or around downtown.

-- Julie Makinen