GREEN MACHINE!

I was the perfect target age when Green Machine first came out in the '70s. For my 9th birthday, I had a choice to get either a bike or a Green Machine. This commercial certainly made Green Machine to be the sexier option. The sportscaster announcer, the energetic disco music, and those singers wailing away in the background made Green Machine look like the ultimate playground tail magnet. But the sensible side of me won over and knew that it would be cooler to have a real bike.

Weird that they picked "8, 9, years old" as a slogan for this, as that's about the age where boys were really too old to want a toy like that. Maybe it was so the 6 and 7 year olds that were better suited to it would think they were growing up quickly.

It's funny when you look at those moments in life where you were "too old" for a toy or something fun. Looking back now, I love all sorts of toys, but there are certainly those "growing up" moments where you put the toy back on the shelf and settle for something "more mature". I remember when the '80s smaller GI Joe line came out and buying a Snake Eyes action figure. He looked cool, but was pretty shoddy, and a pale descendant of the bigger more rugged Joes from my youth. This is about the same time that Transformers, He-Man, and the rest of the big '80s toys came out and I officially was no longer into "kid stuff". That is until I got older again. Nostalgia gives us all a chance to get that neat stuff again.