>>6851922I have a bunch but i'll pick this Matchbox "get in the fast lane" Ford Bronco II.
Every summer, me and my 7 year older brother would take a car trip to the north of Italy. Apart from a lot of plushies we brought a ton of toy cars. Our favourite ones were the relatively big wheeled 4x4 type cars.
Around the same time I played a lot of Monstertruck madness n64 too. But on vacation, we used to walk with our parents through the older cities and small villages we stayed a lot. Since Italians are totally nuts about elaborate fencing, we passed many many miles of concrete chest-high ridges and walls. And our toy cars with those type of bigger wheels and live suspension were ideal for driving over all of them, EVERYWHERE we went.
I will never forget the feeling of driving over those surfaces. The vibration you feel in your fingers from the wheels rolling over the embedded gravel. The slight resistance and bobbing of the suspension. The sensation when turning and steering them around obstacles. That monotonous grindy rattling sound.
We even had this roleplay element to, we called it "Tiger and Eagle". My brother was called Tiger and I was Eagle. Since my brother had this old red matchbox Jeep Wagoneer with rally printing on it he was a dog with green hair. (an injoke about how the black plastic interior had a molded sitting black dog in the trunk) I always pictured him as just a brown dog with a spiky green hairdo like cool 90's kids used to. Thinking back, it was never really established he wasn't full Oscar the Grouch green.
I was a regular human with blue hair shaped in both triangles and squares (a joke of my brother i somehow took seriously. Square shaped spikes in your spiky hair?) Together we had this ongoing story of our growing carpark of modified offroad trucks.
These things have such an emotional impact on me and I still have a fascination for modified old beatdown cars. I hope to incorporate them in my art some day.
I still own them all.
