Random As Rhyme

This is going to be the first of many, many, remote control devices I wanted over the years. These things were like crack to me, electric wheeled crack. I wanted as many as I could get, and as soon as I got one I got a custom to it and then bored and wanted a newer faster better one. My suppliers tended to be Tyco, Radioshack, and New Bright as they put out the most gimmicky eye catching toy quality RC cars at the time, and my dealers were my parents.

One of the cars I remember wanting really bad was the XRC Ricochet (Tyco had a similar one called the Rebound).

The car was a 2 sided remote control car with big tires that allowed it to run upside down, right side up, on its side, basically as long as a wheel touched the ground this car would orient itself in a way where it could move. What the video doesn’t clearly illustrate however, was that for a toy it was fast as hell.

I remember one day running my mouth of at Jr high saying I had a car that could beat anyone’s and my friend Erran challenged me to a race. So we both ran home and charged our cars and four or so hours when our ‘quick’ chargers finished (whoever thought making kids wait 4 hours for 20 minutes play time is sadistic) the race was on.

I got crushed, ruined, destroyed, humiliated, and emasculated all at once. It was a sad day for my playground ego.

I quickly deemed whatever piece of junk I had at the time inadequate and used up whatever occasion I had coming up (birthday, Christmas, chore completion, passing marks whatever) to acquire one.

As was often the case my parents screwed up and bought me the wrong thing normally I would be devastated however, just this once what they did buy me happened to be better than what I actually wanted.

Instead of getting me the car they got me the bike version I didn’t even know existed. I scoured the Internet wide and far for a photo of this marvel but all I could find was the damn instruction manual.

The bike, like the car, had big tires went fast and could bash off anything and keep going. The big wheels made it stable enough to go on and off road, which was something most remote control motorcycles of the time could not do.

This thing was so much fun that not only did I hold onto it for years, but I also distinctly recall playing with it as recent as 5 years ago before giving it to a neighborhood child who lived near me at my last dwelling.

That kid no doubt soon broke it as after years of punishment at my hands it was starting to show some cracks. The thought of kind of that kind of sucks but I probably started his electric crack habit and the thought of that is kind of awesome.