Did you get the one with Magna-Traction?
My older brother had the older Aurora (the AFX were definitely better). I stupidly got gulled by the commercials for Johnny Lightning (Ideal) and Class-A Racing (Topper).
I can’t wait for my 5 year old son to open it up on Christmas. I’ll probably have as much fun playing with it as he will. Ebay has a lot of vintage race sets for sale. It’s fun just to look at them like we did when we were kids and had no money.
I remember playing with cap guns. We would play cops and robbers for hours on end. Would take a box of caps and drop a big rock on them, just to hear the BANG! Two police officers from the 61st precinct in Brooklyn showed us that. Said of we were going to bomb the crooks, we should do that.
They also came around right before the 4th and showed us how to properly light fireworks without blowing ourselves up. Of course they reminded us that fireworks were illegal and told us if we planned on going to Ms. Manaccino’s house to buy them, it was cheaper to buy the gross of “jap” rockets and mat of firecrackers instead of single packs.
Funny, they also told us to tell our parents they said hi and to fix a couple of extra burgers for them on the 4th. They played in our father/son baseball games, deank beer with our parents and every now and then gave someone a ride home with a warning. No where did the word “pig” come into the conversation.
If a kid did go wrong because of drugs or getting into a gang, it was nipped in the bud. A couple of nights at Spofford usually solved the problem. More than once the local pot dealer vanished for weeks at a time, the last time coming around with a broken leg and bruises all over, only to tell the locals he was out of business.
I know this is off topic, but having a cap gun brought back memories of growing up in Brooklyn. It also brought back memories of the two officers who walked our neighborhood and how they were respected and revered by us kids.