Vroom-Vrooming off to an Early Start on the Road to Car Nirvana
My son gets in his car, slams the door, looks over his shoulder at me and waves. “Bye,” he says, backing into a slightly imperfect three-point turn and zipping away. Zipping is a relative term, since the car in question is a plastic Step 2 Super Coupe and its driver is not yet 2. But no 16-year-old ever loved his rebuilt ’67 Chevy more than Danny Mac loves his “beepbeep.” Or anything on four wheels--from the lowliest Matchbox knock-off to his uncle’s slick Chrysler convertible.
One minute he was quite content to play with the odd Tupperware bowl, the next he was biologically attached to the battered remains of a toy tow truck excavated from the nether regions of our sandbox, pushing it across the floor and making vroom-vroom noises while my husband and I watched in baffled amazement.
Neither of us makes vroom-vroom noises. We had not even broached the play possibilities of cars. We were focused on animals. To our adult minds, animals provide a respite from the real world. We own two cars but not even one zebra. We would rather play with zebras.
But now we play with cars, making throw-rug tunnels and vroom-vroom noises and remember that childhood actually had a lot more to do with demolition derbies than African safaris. The shiny-slick clatter of a fleet of Matchbox cars hitting the floor evokes a welter of memories as intense as any Proustian madeleine ever could.
Watching Danny Mac clamber into the front seat of the real “beepbeep” and seize the wheel with wild joy, I remember the hours I spent “driving” my brother and Mom on trips to China via Hershey Park. Cars are the ultimate symbol of maturity, and freedom--the Holy Grail of childhood.
For years, my brother and I played a game with two of our cousins called “There’s a Bomb in the Car.’ The four of us would sit in an older cousin’s nonfunctioning Comet, until one of us yelled, “There’s a bomb in the car,” and we all threw ourselves out the doors and onto the driveway. We did this for hours.
“Kids have so little control over their lives,” says Matt Bousquette,president of Boys/Entertainment Division at Mattel. “[Toy] cars and what they can do with them is very empowering to a child. He is a god of his own fantasy world.”
Bousquette’s purview includes Hot Wheels, the second most popular single toy sold last year (trailing Furby). He and his staff talk to 100,000 kids every year to find out what they want and why, and what they want is more cars.
And sometimes they get very specific. Chuck Scothon, vice president of marketing at Fisher-Price, reports that among the battery-powered, drivable Power Wheels line, SUV-like models are the most popular.
“Driving is the ultimate fantasy for children,” he says, “the No. 1 thing they want to do.”
That’s both genders. Girls prefer more realistic Hot Wheels--station wagons, sedans--and boys go for flashier models, but when it comes to Power Wheels, the trend is reversed: Girls want the Lamborghinis, the boys are happy with a Jeep.
Of course, nobody’s going for the 10-year old Honda Civic or the 1995 Volvo wagon. Fantasy is fantasy after all.
