For starters, my 4 year old nephew was the recipient of several automotive themed gifts, as per his requests of Santa. I had the task of assembling two of these presents. First up was the Hot Wheels Mega Garage or some such mini parking structure that came complete with an elevator in lieu of the regular helix structure that one might drive up and down to traverse ramp levels. What seemed to take the longest time was applying the many stickers to the ramp. It made me wonder if I’d find parking downtown as exciting as Lucian seemed to find his new parking garage if the Haaf ramp was adorned with all manner of flaming graphics and decals at every turn instead of “compact only” signs, and “reserved” postings.
The second toy I helped assemble and operate was the Hot Wheels Car maker, which comes with a few chassis on which one mounts little car or truck bodies that one casts using this red plastic machine. It works like this: one’s nephew selects which mold he wants to use -in this case, it went in this order: truck, car, car. One pops the mold into the machine, then jams a cylinder of a somewhat hard, wax-like plastic into the top of the machine. Then, the machine is started. It makes a bunch of sounds that fascinate people who are under the age of 8, and eventually, it speaks to let it be known that it’s warmed up. At this point, one presses down the lever, which rams the wax/plastic cylinder into the “furnace” as it were, and from there, the molten plastic is injected into the mold. This is followed by a series of sounds lasting several minutes while the casting cools, at which point, the door pops open, and the mold can be removed. From there, one pries the casting from said mold, pops it onto a chassis of the nephew’s choice, and sends him off with a sheet of stickers and decals with which to decorate the newly created vehicle, after which he will proceed to get said vehicle jammed up in the elevator for his new parking structure.
Even my niece got in on the automotive action with her Christmas list. She had a very specific request this year thanks to some clever marketing on the part of Mattel. My niece got some Barbie pony thing for her birthday earlier in the year, and when playing with her little friends, ended up watching the DVD that accompanied the toy -it featured some horribly produced cartoon, the plot of which amounted to what I can only describe as ghastly drivel. The short and sweet of it is that it was a thinly veiled marketing ploy that depicted the very toys she had received for her birthday taking part in some type of activity that involved Barbie and her little minions, Skipper, and whatever the other one’s name is, trucking the horse around to some riding event in a massive pink Recreational Vehicle. Low and behold, this Barbie DVD just happened to include a brochure that prominently featured the “now available in stores!“ version of this pink behemoth on wheels, which is what my niece produced when asked what she wanted for Christmas. An RV? I thought; is Barbie pushing retirement or something? I tried to recommend something more fun or sporty for my niece’s dolls, but she spurned the idea of the Barbie Corvette or whatever offering it is that Mattel has manufactured for their dolls to rack up speeding tickets with these days. My niece insisted that her dolls already have a VW Beetle (Pink, of course, and so sweet and cutesie-pooh that the mere sight of it practically triggers a gag reflex or a diabetic coma inducing blood sugar spike). Okay then, an RV was the only thing, it seemed. Not that it was easy to track down. I had to go to a few different stores before I even found it, and then suppress a gasp of shock at just how much a hideous pink plastic Barbie RV/horse trailer costs -honestly, I think it may have been cheaper to buy Barbie an ACTUAL Corvette or something. I’m not even going to say how much I paid for the silly thing, because frankly, it’s embarrassing.
My consolation came from the fact that at least the pink RV is a motor vehicle of some kind. And really, what did I expect? My niece is the type of kid who gets excited about minivans and station wagons at the auto show when there are gleaming super cars and hyper cars just yards away that are far more deserving of admiration. So, behold the wondrous glory of the overpriced Barbie RV/horse trailer thing. You might note from the little green creature -I think it is a Brachiosaurus- that the RV is apparently being used to transport dinosaurs in addition to horses, so at least the preposterous little rig has come in handy in Barbie’s paleontology pursuits.
As for my own Christmas presents. I did get some car themed stuff. For starters, I got new rear brake pads for my Mustang, which I will have to work on once the weather gets warm again. Doesn’t sound exciting, but it was on my list and I was happy to get them. The other car related thing I got was an old board game called Dealer’s choice. It was made by Parker Brothers in 1972 and allows its players to take on the role of wheelin’ dealin’ sleazy used car salespeople.
I played a couple rounds of it with my family members over the holidays and found that it’s a game that can bring out the lying sack of crap in anybody who takes part. My brother, Latham, definitely took on the role of double-crossing, fast-talking car salesman, and I dubbed his dealership “Lyin’ Latham’s Lemon Lot”, which was something he found amusing, considering I used to work in car sales for a guy who is now serving a 10 year sentence in prison for wire fraud after cheating Chrysler financial and some other lenders out of millions and millions of dollars. One lender even won a default judgment of nearly 500 million dollars against the guy -not that they’ll see that money anytime soon… or ever. I was quite low on that totem pole there, and certainly had no part in the fraud, not only because I don’t relish the idea of prison, but also because I was just a peon in the company. I did get the notion that something wasn’t quite right, though, and I left when I couldn’t get straight answers about simple stuff and got screwed out of a sizable chunk of money that I earned from the company.
I wouldn’t say I had hard feelings, because in a way, it was a relief to not have to deal with that company. But for months after I left, I had to put up with seeing that guy’s face plastered all over busses and billboards, which made me bristle like a cat that's been rubbed the wrong way. Anyway, I felt a sense of vindication when I saw him getting dragged into criminal proceedings. Actually, vindication might not be the right word for it, because there was a tinge of that spitefully childish desire to just want to see somebody stick it to that sleazy guy. I suppose I’ll have to settle on a more honest term for how I felt: Schadenfreude -the pleasure of witnessing another‘s misfortune -Yep, that pretty much sums it up. I was kind of thrilled to see things go down in flames there if I’m being completely honest, and happier yet to find out that my friend JT whom I met and worked with at the same dealership had gotten out before things went down the tube also. Still, mostly happy about the misfortune…. After all, it’s not often in life that one actually gets to witness Karma whipping back around to knock somebody so deserving on their ass.
Funny how this old board game brought back the memories of my time selling cars. It wasn’t all bad. I loved the cars. Every day, I’d walk the lot and check out the fresh trade row, “shaking hands” with the vehicles on the lot, taking them out for a spin to get to know my inventory, and the thrill of discovery when getting behind the wheel of a car I wasn’t familiar with. I loved driving the cars, and I loved helping people find a car that they liked. I hated the lack of transparency I came up against in the business side of that line of work, for good reason as it turned out. This old game, Dealer’s Choice is fun in that it revels in the sleazy and dishonest aspects of car sales. I’d say there are plenty of perfectly reputable and honest places and people to buy cars from, but there are also very good reasons why car sales has such a scummy reputation, and for a while, I worked for a living, breathing example of why.
The game has a total of 25 cars that can be traded and sold amongst the dealers playing. Of those, only 4-5 have been featured thus far on my blog and even then, the exact years are a bit skewed. Oddly, the game has 3 different Lincoln Continentals: a ’41, a ‘56 (featured), and a ’71 (sort of featured -I had a late 70’s model on here). It has a ’71 Cadillac (I know I’ve featured some beat up old Caddies, so we’ve got some span of the 1970s covered), in addition to a ’71 Jaguar E-type, which was brought up in my Harold and Maude post in late October if I recall. Anyway, I’ll be keeping a look out for cars that match the Auto cards in my board game here, though I suspect if I find them anywhere, it will probably be at good old Ellingson Classic Cars, so I’ve got yet another excuse to keep popping in there for visits.
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