I thought I'd wait until we were residents of Henderson to expand my toy working vehicles collection. I was wrong.
Target was the first errand for Dad, Meridith and I, with Sprouts and Pavilions afterward, and we were there because Dad needed Imodium A-D or something like it. "Something like it" won out because it was cheaper than the brand.
We were at the register, Dad paid, and as he was leaving, I realized that I forgot to look at the Matchbox cars in the toy aisles. Meridith called Dad to let him know where we were and that we'd be at the car in a few minutes, and off I went, fairly rushing, fueled by my enthusiasm for my collection.
The tow truck still wasn't being sold separately from the car repair service set, but I first became giddy from finding a "Dallas Fort Worth Airport" hazmat truck. Then a green garbage truck with a sun and a green leaf in a white rectangle in the middle on each side, the stem of the green leaf saying "Live better in a clean world!", with "Go Green" under the leaf and word stem.
The back of the garbage truck is slightly open, and you press it down, and it comes back up to its original place. It's meant to be the crusher that comes down to make room for more garbage.
The final working vehicle I found was a water truck, labeled "Aqua King" on the underside. The inside of the truck is full of what's supposed to look like greenish bottles, their tops sticking out like you see on the road. This is one of my favorites.
I love how relatively cheap my hobby is, with these vehicles being $1.07 each. For now, at least, I don't go searching often for mine, and my hobby started by happening to find that five-pack of city vehicles, including the ice cream truck and moving truck, at the same Target. I was just browsing aimlessly.
I still want that tow truck, but now that I've searched on eBay, probably not the one I've been eyeing in that five-pack. There's so many other Matchbox types, including a "GMC Wrecker" released this year, another from 1990, and still another from 2000. I think I've found something to do while working on my writing projects.
One of the true goals of a hobby is to get as much of your collection at the cheapest price...thus making it more valuable to someone later in life. I like your ideas and reasons for collecting working vehicles, too. So many of the MatchBox stuff is too far out there to be real.
ReplyDeleteMy sister, God rest her soul, collected Hess Toy Trucks each year. She has most of them from the beginning. She missed a year or two.
My hobby used to be collecting butterfly wings but then I realized I was killing the butterflies so I stopped. Poor butterflies :(
ReplyDeleteCoffeypot, some of the Matchbox stuff is out there, but not as much as Hot Wheels. There's not one car in that line that doesn't have at least one outrageous modification.
ReplyDeleteI played with Hot Wheels when I was a tyke and further on. I had the tracks they always advertised, trying to get my cars to do the loop-the-loops, but never succeeding because I never could get them going fast enough and gravity always got in the way.
I was at Target at the Pacific Coast Mall in Ventura today (More on that in an entry tomorrow centered on my mom's birthday, which is today, and what turned out to be day 6 of a four-week pleasure cruise. A nice, muted surprise), looking in the toy aisles for Matchbox. While thumbing through the individual cars they had, I realized that I had collected some working vehicles when I was a kid. I had Hess Trucks every year. Displayed them proudly in my room. I don't have those particular Hess Trucks anymore, but I might get some back after I move.
BragonDorn, think about it like this: You prevented a lot of tsunamis, earthquakes and tornadoes.
I never had any projects in school that involved nailing butterflies or any other kind of insect to a cork board. I could understand a project like that being metaphorically valid in English class, in describing the struggles of writers, but it never made sense to me. If classification is needed, then teachers should just draw butterflies or whatever the example is, or get that really artistically talented, yet withdrawn kid from the back of the room to do it, once he stops glaring long enough to take a breath.