The thing is, I can't tell you what most of those gifts were. Some of them have stuck with me, of course. I definitely remember the really cool pedal-power firetruck I got when I was three. Three years later I got a nifty Marx (the toy company, not the failed economic theorist) rocket launching play set, complete with spring-loaded rockets that launched into the air and a model of the old X-15 suborbital rocket plane. Along the way, I got the usual assortment of footballs, record albums (for you young'uns, records were what we used to play music back in the days before CDs), board games and toys of all description. Like Ralphie in A Christmas Story, I even got a BB gun one year. Unlike Ralphie, I did not and do not think the BB gun was the best Christmas present I ever received.
I loved the coolest Christmas present I ever received so much that I asked for, and received, it three times. What was that coolest Christmas present ever? An electric slot car race set!
I can imagine most of your faces right now, screwed up in confusion as you wonder, "What they heck is a slot car race set?" Bruce is old enough that he probably remembers them, but I came prepared to explain this to the rest of you.
First, here is a photo of a slot car track:
See those silver lines running through the track? They carry electrical current to the race cars. Each silver line is actually two strips of metal, one to carry the current to the car and one to carry it away. In between the strips is the slot that gives slot car racing its name. The slot is used to guide the cars around the track while also keeping the car's electrical contacts on the two strips of metal. In other words, the track steers the car, not you. What you do is control the speed of the car by controlling the amount of electricity flowing through the metal strips. More electricity equals more speed and vice versa. The challenge comes from handling the turns as the only thing holding the car on the track and the car's guide in the slot is gravity. Go too fast through the turns and the car goes flying off the track. While you run to put your car back on the track, your opponent(s) keep going, leaving you in their dust.
Slot car sets come in several different sizes, or scales. You've probably seen HO, or 1/87, scale. I find this scale too small as the cars can't be as detailed as I prefer. HO cars are also so fast for their size that they're almost blurs on the track. Then there's 1/24 scale, which is so big it takes a lot of space to setup and is also really expensive. Most home slot car racers generally stick with 1/32 scale. That's what is pictured above. The cars are large enough to show details but small enough that a nice track can be setup in a space eight feet by four feet. The price also falls in between the prices of the other two scales.
By the way, I have enough track to reproduce the track in the picture, except mine would be two lanes instead of four. (All track pieces have two lanes. To make a four lane track takes a whole lot of two lane track pieces.)
Even reading my own description of slot car racing, it doesn't sound that exciting. So just trust me when I say it was so much fun that I didn't give it up when they went out of style in the late '60s. I didn't even give slot car racing up after growing up. Shortly after the Boy was born, I discovered that slot cars were making a comeback. As my mother had given away all my slot car stuff when we moved when I was 16, I'd suffered without for over 20 years. Much to my wife's dismay, I dropped a couple of hundred dollars on a new race set and the addiction began again. Don't even ask how much more I've spent since then! Mind you, the Boy really enjoyed playing with the slot cars, too. And they've been a big hit at several of his birthday parties, sometimes even out-drawing the video games.
So, what's all this got to do with Geek Fu? Come on! A grown man playing around with slot car race sets? I mean, just how geeky can you get? Okay, not as geeky as, say, getting an "official" Star Trek Starfleet uniform and wearing it around town, but it's still pretty darned geeky.
What about you? What's the geekiest Christmas gift you've ever gotten that you just absolutely loved?
Was it geekier than my slot car sets?
Was it geekier than getting an authentic replica of the jacket Luke Skywalker wore on Degobah in The Empire Strikes Back? Oh, wait, maybe that's my geekiest Christmas gift ever...
Let the arguments begin!
ULTIMAGE GEEK FU runs every Wednesday. Have a question that's just bugging the heck out of you about Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate, Battlestar Gallactica, Farscape, Firefly, Fringe, Heroes, The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Smallville, The X-Files, X-Men, The Man From Atlantis, or pretty much any other SF-flavored media property? Send it to slushpile@thefridaychallenge.com with the subject line, "Geek Fu," and we'll stuff it in the queue.
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