| I remember that when I was a kid, I used to work hard delivering newspapers 7 days a week to earn enough money to buy a slot car. I used to beg my big sister to drive me to the hobby shop where I'd spend almost an hour trying to decide which car I wanted to buy, and if I'd have enough left over for some silicone tires. As soon as we got home, I'd run upstairs to my room, open that baby up oil it, replace the tires, run it for an hour or two before taking it over to the kid across the street's garage where we had most of our track combined and we'd race all night, losing track of who was winning and just having a good time. Well, the release of the Johnny Lightning slot cars have brought the same feeling back. The bodies are good, the cars are fast right out of the box and cheap enough that, even as adults, we don't have to think of what the car might be worth before breaking out the dremel, paint and decals. They're designed the same as the original Aurora T-Jets so all of the skills we learned as kids still apply. Just as Aurora did in the 60's, the cars are built as cheaply as possible in order to be as inexpensive as possible but because times have changed, there are some differences. The plastic idler and driven gears are the main changes. Back in the 60's, collecting wasn't what people did with toys, but Johnny Lightning realized that people do that now so have been producing less of each one as well as adding surprise White Lightinings to some cases (something they brought over from their sucessful die cast business). But the best part about them is that because they are new, they don't have to be treated with the reverence that most of us give to the original Aurora cars and parts. And they're cheap enough that if you want to hog out the wheel wells and put huge tires on them, just to see what it would look like, there's no hesitation. (Would you modify an Aurora Purple Charger like I did my Johnny Lightning?)
These cars will never be Aurora T-Jets, but they weren't meant to be. They just bring back the old days when we lavished love on them just because we were boys and they were toy cars.
Buy one, take it apart, play with it, they're just as fun now as they were 40 years ago. | | |
