Burn out the day, burn out the night; I can’t see no reason to put up a fight.
December 10: Toy Fire Truck
This is a tiny radio controlled fire truck.
Rating
Fun ★★★★★
Oh boy, this is a fun one. Fire trucks are inherently fun. I mean, in the little kid way, where they’re red and loud all lit up and not closely associated with actual disasters. I was recently at the grocery store while the Philadelphia Fire Department’s Ladder 21 was exercising its ladder (or something) in the parking lot. It was one of those serious, articulated fire trucks with the rear steering, and rear steering still seems like something that should only exist in Dr. Seuss illustrations for Five-Jointed Fuffle Futes and Self-Propelled Articuloots. There were probably 10 shoppers stopped in their tracks at various locations across the parking lot—grownups—just watching it go.
This is definitely a toy fire truck, and is radio controlled via a controller similar to the one that came with the Toy Yacht. It is impossibly small, basically 3×1 Lego pips in total, yet still somehow has an operating ladder. Highly fun.
Ease of Build ★★★★★
The fire truck was not difficult to build. It had about 8 pieces, which didn’t exactly put it in the realm of Sally Struthers’ International Correspondence School for TV/VCR repair, but I appreciate having something to build at all.
Comprehensibility ★★★★☆
Despite its outrageous levels of fun, I’m not certain that I would have figured this out in one try if not for the context. It’s so small. Things eventually get down to a size where they stop making sense, and this fire truck is close to that threshold where it becomes hard to tell if it’s made of Legos or long chains of polybutadiene crisscrossed with shorter chains of poly(styrene-co-acrylonitrile). I think what they’re using for wheels are actually supposed to be train wheels, and given the wheel configuration, the yellow accent color, and the highly aerodynamic windshield, I would have had little trouble believing that this was the engine from a high-speed train, with the ladder being some sort of awkward forward-leaning pantograph to conduct the electricity from the overhead wires. But I’m still pretty sure it’s a fire truck.
The overwhelming characteristic of yesterday’s Hot Cocoa Guy may be that he looks like he just got handed a Maßkrug of hot chocolate by Count Chocula in a dirndl, but that’s definitely a flame surrounded by axes on his ugly sweater. There’s got to be some sort of firefighting angle, which is why I’m sticking with “fire truck.”
Extra Parts ★★☆☆☆
The fire truck comes with a spare set of wheels and a smooth red square.
Overall ★★★★★
It’s great. My only regret is that I used all of my ham radio material on the Toy Yacht, not realizing that there would be more opportunities to talk about amateur radio transmissions this holiday season.
