Individuals’ tastes in automobiles maintain getting larger. This sucks — large automobiles are worse for the world, worse for your pockets, and worse for all of the folks they mow down. However now, the American obsession with measurement has come for our most beloved automobile: The Little Tikes Cozy Coupe.
Don’t fear — the Coupe, and its eight variants, are nonetheless round. However they’re joined by a sinister alter, a twisted parallel universe model with malicious intentions: The Cozy Truck. This un-cozy impostor is a pox, a menace, and I would like to speak about it. I don’t care that it’s been round for 12 years.
See that darling little one over there, enraptured by the controls on America’s greatest promoting automotive? That’s a really younger Steve, below two years outdated if the date within the shot is to be believed. He’s sitting in what seems to be a second-generation Cozy Coupe — arguably the height of Little Tikes design — and clearly having a implausible time. Positive, it is a scene from a bygone, car-loving period, however did we actually want to vary issues so drastically? Weren’t these days higher?
The Cozy Coupe is smoothed-over, spherical, approachable. The truck, in contrast, is all exhausting edges advert sq. corners — its headlight eyes and smiling face aren’t sufficient to distract from its inherent unapproachability. It’s a meaner, extra aggressive automobile, and it parallels the alternatives grownup Individuals now make when shopping for automobiles — a should be larger, angrier, to win collisions.
The Cozy Truck additionally mirrors one other odd facet of American consumerism: The incessant must gender the whole lot. Take a look at the Cozy Coupe above, with its pink physique and yellow roof. It’s not a “boys’ toy” or a “women’ toy” — it’s only a toy. The Coupe does are available a pink Princess colorway, geared toward “any little lady,” however the one blue variant is the Ice Cream Cozy Truck. Regardless of the identify, it makes use of the Cozy Coupe physique, and its promo photos present a woman behind the wheel.
The non-ice cream Cozy Truck, in contrast, is just out there in Genders: The blue Cozy Truck, and the purple Princess Cozy Truck. There’s no default choice right here, nothing meant to be gender-neutral. In fact, younger children of all genders can get no matter coloured toy they like, however the way in which these toys are marketed and focused is obvious: The Cozy Coupe’s broad enchantment is now not legitimate, the trendy Cozy Truck’s gendered play is the long run.
The Little Tikes Cozy Truck is a microcosm of the whole lot fallacious with the trendy automotive market — measurement, aggression, gendered enchantment. This stuff are all horrible in actual automobiles, so why are we extending them to the idealized shapes of kids’s toys? Why should we defile the Little Tikes Cozy identify with this truck, when the Coupe has been so good for therefore lengthy?
