I’m Thankful for Online Shopping
Plus, a lengthy aside about how the Tyco Scorcher 6X6 was a massive fraud
Kids these days have no idea how easy they’ve got it. I mentioned last week how the Amazon toy catalog comes to kids with an integrated wish list, games, stickers and puzzles. It’s very cool! Know what else is nice about Amazon (and online shopping, in general)? They actually have the toys you want, in stock, and available for purchase.
That was not to be taken for granted, as recently as a couple decades ago. I doubt coming generations will have any concept of how challenging it was to actually find a given, specific thing somebody wanted for Christmas. There happens to be a very informative documentary about this phenomenon, called “Jingle All the Way,” if you’d like to learn more about that period in history.
Lest you think that film was an exercise in hyperbole, allow me to recount a personal example of the challenges of finding heavily-marketed toys. Let’s go back to the year 1993.
1993 was a wonderful time to be a kid watching TV, because, at that time, Steven Spielberg decided to throw all of his talents and powers into producing cartoons for kids. This resulted in Tiny Toons and Animaniacs, which were easily in the top 5 best shows on all network television during their run.
As I watched these cartoons, I was subjected to all the infamous and effective cartoon commercials, and I was not immune to their influence. This commercial in particular, for the Tyco Scorcher 6X6, got me:
Having viewed this commercial enough times, I became convinced that the Scorcher 6X6 would complete me, as a person. Why? The question does baffle me now. I must’ve been truly hypnotized. I have no idea what my plans were for this toy. How could this RC car have been entertaining for more than, like, 10 minutes? Especially where I lived; there wasn’t some sandstone desert wilderness wherein I could push the limits and try cool tricks. We had a heavy gravel driveway, a lot of grass, and mud. All of those terrains would’ve most certainly outmatched - if not destroyed - this low-riding plastic monstrosity, within a couple hours of use.
“Six wheels, that’ll out-turn, out-maneuver, any 4-wheeler!!” growls the narrator of the commercial. Let’s put aside, for the moment, the fact that two of those wheels are almost strictly decorative. More on that later. The larger question is, who, exactly, was around, to be out-turned and out-maneuvered? Especially for me, living in the middle of nowhere, on a patch of land between a forest and a cow pasture, there was simply no foreseeable need to outmaneuver anyone, or anything.
Nevertheless, I bought in.
Tyco Was a Toy Company Run by Lying Liars Who Lied
The commercial got me, and it was a total fraud. A first hint should’ve been the “CAUTION: INTAKE AREA” decal on the front of the Scorcher 6X6. This was a battery operated electric vehicle; even in the years before Tesla, I knew there could be no purpose for an air intake, and certainly there was no turbine posing a threat to pull in and chew up some unsuspecting passer-by. There wasn’t actually any sort of vent at all - the aperture below the hood was, itself, fake, and quite obviously painted on.
That’s not even close to the real fraud though. The Scorcher 6X6 was, by it’s very name, one, big, rolling lie. You see, calling it the 6X6, can only be interpreted to mean that it has six-wheel drive. 4X4 means four-wheel drive, so 6X6 must mean there are six powered wheels. Yet, with the benefit of the internet, I have now learned that, all along, only 4 of the wheels were powered.
The front two were just sort of there for balance. It was the Scorcher 6X4. That’s technically what it ought to have been named, were Tyco being honest.
Imagine if Toyota sold a Tacoma with “4X4” printed all over it, but it was actually just rear-wheel drive… that’s what was going on here. It’s kind of astounding that Tyco could just flat out lie like that, to kids.
One more thing bothers me about the Scorcher 6X-Fraud:
“Radio-controlled, rechargeable 9.6V Turbo power!!”
This here was not so much of a lie, but it’s where I really got annoyed. Yes, 9.6V power is real … a couple of my neighbor kid friends had 9.6V powered RC cars, and it’s true, those things could rip. But there was some trickery from Tyco because, as I recall, there was perhaps only one time in my life where I ever actually saw a 9.6V Scorcher 6X6 on a store shelf. What was commonly there instead, were boxes and boxes of a half-sized but otherwise identical version of the Scorcher 6X6, and that had a smaller, weaker, unremarkable 6.0V Tyco battery pack.
This was not the version from the commercial. Yet this is what was in every Walmart, K-Mart, and Toys R Us. I was enough of an attention-detailed guy to easily spot the difference, but one wonders how many kids got disappointed on their birthday or Christmas morning, because there was no way to expect a typical parent to catch the subtle bait-and-switch from Tyco.
So, not only was Tyco misrepresenting the fundamental distinguishing feature of their toy (six-wheel drive), but they were barely distributing the large, powerful version from the commercials we all saw between cartoons, and instead made widespread availability of their own, sneaky, weakened, knock-off version.
It All Worked Out for the Best
I’m trying to figure out the timeline here. Tyco started pushing the 6X6 in 1993. I must’ve determined that I wanted one during 1994, and started saving. As I recall, the big 9.6V version cost around $75, and between my allowance savings, and my birthday Christmas cash inflows, I had just about enough to make the purchase in late December of 1994.
I vaguely recall getting my mom to take some detours on that week’s grocery trip, to try to pick one up. And I sharply recall the growing anxiety and disappointment as store after store was coming up empty.
Eventually, I may or may not have found one, dusty, returned, and poorly repackaged specimen on a shelf at the now long-defunct Best (not Best Buy. “Best” - that’s a whole other article). $75 was a massive cash outlay for me then (as it is now); it would be pretty sad to part with my money and take home some other kid’s rejected, played-with toy.
And then, a miracle happened. I have no idea where the idea came from, but I took an abrupt left-turn from my plans. I made a large, impulse purchase, that became probably one of the only cases of a large, impulse purchase working out. It was Christmas, I had weeks off from school, I’d been all over town looking for this toy, and I just wasn’t going home empty-handed. I called an audible and directed my year’s savings toward the purchase of the revolutionary, hotly marketed, newly released, Donkey Kong Country, for Super Nintendo.
A win, as it turned out.
Lesson of the Story
Two main points this week.
First, people tend to mourn the loss and charm of the brick and mortar store, but they’re perhaps forgetting how entirely inconvenient that whole arrangement was. You couldn’t easily buy what you wanted, and we all had to do a lot more driving.
And this Tyco Scorcher fraud would never be perpetrated today. If Tyco was going to try to sell a 6-wheel drive RC car on Amazon, then first of all, it would have to actually have 6-wheel drive, or else people would destroy it in the reviews. More importantly, it would be in stock.
Second point, people also criticize video games a lot, and talk about the good old days, when kids rode bikes around the neighborhood, played sports, and chased fireflies. In romanticizing the past, we discount the merits of video games though. Donkey Kong Country, for example, was actually a work of art, through and through, and not at all an unhealthy thing for a kid to spend a lot of time with.
The levels were fantastically well-designed, and captivating on the first run-through, and doubtless the game is a factor in forming the creative imagination I have today. Those levels would still hold up on subsequent replays, and I found more to appreciate the more I played it.
Video games get a bad rap - for good reasons. We all too often see grown men who lock themselves in their dens to play Call of Duty while neglecting actual real-life duties. And kids can lack exercise and socialization, so vigilant parents have their concerns about gaming. But those criticisms point more toward the need for self-control and moderation. The actual video games can be good.
In fact, my example of an analog toy (Scorcher 6X6) vs a digital toy (Donkey Kong), in hindsight shows that the video game was, in fact, clearly the better, more enriching and valuable toy. I dodged a bullet by not spending my savings on a gimmicky piece of future toxic waste, instead buying a highly memorable work of enduring art.
Anyway, those are my thoughts. I’m grateful for online shopping, and I’m grateful that in 1994 I bought Donkey Kong Country instead of that gimmicky fraud of an RC car.
On that note, I wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving! I probably shouldn’t bring up any of the above, when we’re all going around the table on Thursday, sharing what we’re grateful for, but I still think it was worth mentioning here. For now I’m going to go wind down by listening to the underwater theme portion of the lo-fi symphony masterpiece which is the Donkey Kong Country soundtrack: