Comparative Reality

I was in a Wal-Mart recently, looking for something that they didn't have, and...er..."wandered by" the toy aisles. I ended up in front of a large display of Hot Wheels cars: 97 cents each! And yet, I resisted. Even at under a dollar, I don't need more stuff cluttering my desk at work, and, to be honest, none of them looked particularly interesting.

...

There was another rack of Matchbox cars, also priced at 97 cents, but you could tell that the quality wasn't as high as the Hot Wheels vehicles. Although that just means that they used more plastic than cheap pot metal. But the Hot Wheels cars are just shinier, and don't look as cheap.

But...in the Matchbox range was a really nifty off-road vehicle, something like a single-seater dune buggy perched on stupidly large tires. And it just calls out to be converted into a Car Wars-style monster.

Which is something that I've been wanting to do for years now.

It's like miniatures, but without all of the need for serious, devoted painting time. Instead, you spend your time chopping up bits of plastic and fine chain and toothpicks and gluing them all over the car. And then slapping some paint on. But the idea is to make them look dirty, damaged, and not at all pristine.

So the monster buggy-thing is now mine. And while wandering around a giant hardware store at lunchtime (I'm not a big fan of the store, but it's the only one close to my office), convinced that there was something that I needed for house projects, and figuring that inspiration would strike, or that I would just get bored, I wandered into the electrical components aisle. After gazing at some nifty bits of copper tubing that would make great barrels, I saw these:

Not the blue things, but the red and yellow things, which are properly called "telephone splice connectors." They just scream turrets. The red ones are about 3/4" long, and just under 1/2" wide. The ledge on the back makes them look like tiny little battleship turrets; at least, tiny little turrets on an anime battleship. Maybe not so good for cars, but great for emplaced fortifications. Or guns on big vehicles, like trucks.

The yellow ones are 1/2" long, and 5/16" wide. Carve the yellow part off, and they'd work quite well as a heavy turret on a car, or lighter weapons at a checkpoint.

These things are great. They'll never be used for their intended purpose. And I really hope that the people who designed these things also sat around thinking about how awesome they would look mounted on tiny cars.

And making PEW-PEW-PEW noises.