Toy Story Too

Sometime during the late 70s or early 80s, I had a life changing Christmas experience. It was the year I discovered the sweet nectar of absolute power.

I remember it like it was yesterday (yesterday stunk, by the way…I was so bored at the office I seriously considered jamming a fork in my eye). That particular year, my toy list was so big it could have easily sent my family into bankruptcy (now I know why my dad was working nights that year). My list had all the old standby’s…G.I. Joe, Star Wars figures, a new football, a new bike…all the stuff a boy my age could have wanted. I had trouble sleeping that night in anticipation of all the goodness that awaited me in the morning.

Imagine my surprise, then, when early that next morning my weary eyes laid sight on what Santa had brought me…a “Big Trak”. What in the world? I didn’t ask for any “Big Trak”! I felt like the elf at the Christmas drive-thru window had gotten my order wrong and there wasn’t anything I could do about it. Man were my friends going to laugh at me. Had I been bad? My ears reddened at the injustice unfurling right before my very eyes. I was shell-shocked.

Now for this to make sense, I have to go into some detail as to what a “Big Trak” is. The “Big Trak” was a pretty popular toy at that time…it was the first of the programmable toys ever to come out. It looked like some sort of space age tank, and it was motorized, and on the top of it was a keypad. What you would do is program a series of instructions into this keypad and then hit the “Go” button, and the “Big Trak” would carry out the instructions. It could move in any direction and could also move material with a basket sort of contraption that it would lower and raise, and it would dump its contents out if you told it to.

After a few minutes of discouraged hand-wringing and pouting, my curiosity moved me to check it out. I was stuck with this toy…I figured I’d see if there was any enjoyment to be salvaged from it before totally writing it off. After mashing on a few of the buttons just to see what would happen, I quickly flipped through the instruction manual just to get a feel for how to “program” it. I decided to start with something simple…get the “Big Trak” to go forward for a few feet and then come back to me. I entered the commands and hit the “Go” button…and then watched as the “Big Trak” slowly lurched forward as I had told it to. After a certain point, it reversed and came right back to me. “Hey…that’s kind of cool…I wonder what else I could make it do?” I decided to have it do some turns…basically driving in a square pattern until it would again come back to me. This worked too, and as I kept thinking of ways to challenge the “Big Trak” a strange feeling began to overtake me. Here I was…a young kid with no technical capabilities whatsoever, controlling a highly capable robotic artificial intelligence! This “entity” was under my command, and it’s only function in this entire world was to do my bidding! My mind began to swirl with what I can only describe as an “evil zeal” as I begin to contemplate how I could use this “Big Trak” to change my life. Perhaps it could be programmed to keep my sisters out of my room, or to carry out dastardly deeds such as removing their favorite stuffed animals and dumping them in hard to find places. Maybe it would do my homework for me, or pick up my room…the free time I’d have would be incredible. As I drove the “Big Trak” into my room, my other toys suddenly looked lifeless…like nothing more than melted plastic and paint.

My love affair with the “Big Trak” was short-lived…somehow, the “Big Trak” thought that I told it to drive down the stairs...not sure how that happened, must have been a faulty keypad or something because I would never have tried something like that despite claims to the contrary by my parents. Needless to say, it was never the same after that. No matter what you told it to do, it would always make a right turn. Soon it was relegated to the back of my closet and forgotten about.

I was forever changed though, and I'm happy to say that my lust for power still exists to this very day! Thank you Milton Bradley!

So share your favorite toy stories here…I’m going to see if I can buy a new “Big Trak” off of EBay and get it to cut the grass for me.

The "Big Trak" blog - some assembly required, batteries not included.