I usually start these Throwback Thursdays with a vague idea of which older toy I want to write about. Sometimes it will change depending on how lazy I am and how deep I’d have to dig for the toy, but most of the time I have a goal. But this time I didn’t, so I did some digging. After digging through a few plastic boxes where I ran across all kinds of ephemera that didn’t quite grab me (although the Hot Wheels A-team van from 1983 was a contender), I opened up a box of random items and stared down into the abyss.
Miscellaneous was right. There was a Gundam action figure I got free from Toys R Us with the purchase of a Gundam model. There was a small sleeve of baseball cards that were once worth something, including Kirby Puckett’s rookie card and a handful of Bo Jacksons. Remember when Bo Jackson was popular? Neither does he, but he did know Diddly. And who the hell is John Olerud?
There were two California Raisin plushies with the bendable legs. There was a rubbery Harlem Globetrotter figure with bendable wireframe for slam-dunk posing. There was an issue of Rolling Stone that had an interview with Pearl Jam from when their second album debuted. There was a magic 8-ball. Maybe I should do my article on that? All signs pointed to yes, until I realized that the liquid inside had dried up. Try again later.
Then I opened up the small cardboard box and found my article.
I didn’t have many Micro-Machines at all; what you see pictured is all I had. I jumped in when they first started, bought a handful, and then quickly lost interest. Well, I guess “lost interest” may be too harsh a word — there was just too much to collect, and the “Oh, that’s neat” factor went away pretty quickly. That’s kind of unfortunate because I think it would be cool to have a huge collection of the little things.
Micro-Machines hit the scene with an onslaught of commercials of all kinds, usually featuring John Moschitta Jr., the fast talking, mustachioed gentleman who also voiced Blurr in the animated Transformers movie and TV show.
I really liked the monster truck versions. I also bought the same thing when Hot Wheels put out their monster truck versions. I don’t really know if I should be ashamed of that now or not, but I liked big vehicles that could crush little vehicles. Not to the point of actually going to one of those truck shows that always seemed to be on SUNDAY SUNDAY SUNDAY! But enough so that I wanted the toys.
My interest in Micro Machines peaked with the Insiders series, which featured even smaller dime-sized cars inside the already tiny regular Micro Machines. For a brief moment in time this was the coolest thing ever, and it added a whole new layer to the car battles. Nothing brings the fight to the other side like a car opening up and vomiting an even smaller car at the enemy. It’s pretty much how we beat the Kaiser.
While I didn’t stick with these for very long, I’m glad I at least have a representation of this line in my collection, and, looking back, I still really like the ones I have to represent my brief interest. The big-wheeled monster trucks are still as fun as they ever where to roll around, and the precision sculpting and painting on all of them are top notch quality. Even the microscopic ones are well sculpted and capture the look of the vehicles they’re trying to represent.
So here’s to Micro Machines.
