One of the joys I’ve experienced in fatherhood has been to share some of my prized toys with my son. Watching him play with my treasures again fills me with nostalgia and, occasionally, curiosity. Last night, for example, he charged about the house with two Hot Wheels trucks that I had as a child. Now, I didn’t have the most extensive collection of toys when I was a boy, but I did have some really neat pieces. Two of them were these steerable trucks; a cab-over Peterbuilt and a more traditional Ford tractor that for some reason had flames and “Hot Sauce” decals on it. I don’t remember applying those, but more importantly somewhere in the past 30 years the steering trailers just went missing. I never thought about it much until yesterday, when I saw my son excitedly playing with them. I mentioned to him that they used to have trailers, but I was unsure about where they were. Inquisitive as most four year olds are, he simply asked “Can’t you get a new one?”. Huh. I hadn’t considered that. But in the age of the internet and eBay off I went. It didn’t take too much research to find out they were from the “Truck Co” series from Hot Wheels. It took even less time to figure out they were fairly rare. But on eBay, sure enough, there were not only used examples that matched mine, but brand new ones in package with the steering trailers. COOL! Then I looked at the “Buy It Now”. WHAT?!?! I exclaimed as I could barely believe my eyes. $250. That was the price – for one. Even used examples of just the cabs were asking $30-50, and the harder to find trailers trade above $100 used. Is this what recreating your childhood costs now? But, the thing is, you can’t go down to your local hobby or toy store and buy a brand new 1985 Hot Wheels car or truck. And you certainly can’t go down to your local Volkswagen dealer and buy anything near as cool as this 1977 Scirocco:
