Things I Miss: Micro Machines

Hotwheels, only smaller. That's not exactly true, but it's what I though when I first saw them. A friend of mine brought some to school, and I thought they were so cool, if for nothing else, that they were a lot easier to smuggle out of the house than actual Hotwheels. But what I found when I got my first "collection" was that these were fine toys in just about any application. What I like best about them, was that in the early years, you would get five vehicles per package. Instead of having to settle for one fire truck, you got five. Or maybe you got a fire truck plus other emergency vehicles to go along with it. You didn't have to decide whether to get a bulldozer or a front end loader, but instead you got them both plus a dump truck, a concrete truck, and an excavator. It was a whole construction set in one package. Why settle for one fast corvette when you could get five from varying years. And while the cars may have been small, their play was as big as anything else on the market. They held up just as well as Hotweels did under my play conditions. 

The play sets that went along with them were well designed too. They would transform from play sets to normal looking things like a can of car wax, or some other similar product. There were so many sets to choose from too. You had planes, ships, construction equipment, fast cars, service vehicles, army mobiles, and many others. I got older and lost interest in them just before they picked up the Star Wars license, but three lines they had that I favored over all the others. The Tractor & Trailers they had were awesome. They came out a few years into the line and were a great addition, as you could round out your "city" with these.

Another was the addition of Micro Machine train sets. They were in scale with the rest of the line, and even came with their own tracks.

And last but not least were the monster trucks. All the popular ones of the day were available in either two or three packs, I can't remember which, but I had a ton of them. Grave Digger, Carolina Crusher, Equalizer, Mad Dog, and many others were available for your car crushing needs. And again, these were in scale with the rest of the line, so you could line your cars up and run over them with the monster trucks. It was an awesome toy line, and a fun part of my childhood.