The year was 1982.
Saturday morning cartoons ran for six hours back then, beginning at the crack of dawn with a marathon of Loonie Toons classics and reaching an apex around 10 a.m. with shamelessly commercial TV shows based on bestselling toys of the day (Pole Position, Rubik the Amazing Cube, Ewoks, etc.)
The animated odyssey tapered off around noon with more adolescent-oriented dramas about gaunt popstars with fingerless gloves and feathered hair vying for top spot on the music charts.
Throughout the programming, advertisers hard-sold messages about the must-have awesomeness of one toy or another, encouraging boys and girls to ramp up the parental nagging before offering speedy disclaimers about required assembly and the exclusion of batteries.
That year, in the lead-up to Christmas, there was one heavily promoted toy that infected my impressionable brain with a singular obsession of such magnitude that I was scarcely able to converse on any subject that could not be easily segued back to it.
It was a small, scale model motorcycle that could be inserted into a square starting gate equipped with a rotating handle. When you cranked the handle, the motorcycle’s motor mechanism wound tightly. A red launch button sent the taut motorcycle screaming out of the gate, balanced on its two wheels, for an advertised distance of 30 feet.
Wow! In the history of toys, had there ever been anything cooler and of greater value for $20? I thought not.
In my family, which is of Latvian origin on my mother’s side, the principal Christmas celebration took place on the evening of Dec. 24.
The tradition was to have an elaborate meal and then repair to the living room to open presents for untold hours. Christmas Eve 1982 was marked by an explosive anticipation of opening a certain large present that I was certain contained the best toy ever fashioned. The gift was placed near the back of the tree and I was under strict orders not to touch it until it was time to open it.
Stripped of my appetite through sheer nauseous excitement, the time finally came for me to open the glorious gift. With trembling hands I tried to lift the box from the ground. Alas, I fumbled, the box proving much heavier than I expected. Odd, I thought, that the motorcycle should be so heavy. Perhaps its weight is what allowed it to stand on two wheels.
Lugging the absurdly heavy package to a spot on the floor, I felt my cheeks flush with unbridled glee. I tore the paper from the package, revealing a generic cardboard box underneath. I opened the box and fished inside, expecting glossy toy packaging to emerge.
Instead, I encountered layers and layers of tissue paper and felt my hand graze something rough and cold. Perplexed, I extracted two red bricks from the bottom of the box, placing them at my feet. Bricks? What? Were they to build a jump for my motorcycle?
I was urged to keep digging. After much grasping and sorting, I came upon a tiny black box bearing the stamp of the Swiss flag.
Upon opening the diminutive package, I stared in utter bewilderment at the tiniest pen knife I had ever seen. Equipped with a short, surgically sharp knife on one side and a rough nail file on the other, the tool was a junior version of the Swiss Army Knife popular with grandfathers, scout leaders and precisely no seven-year-olds.
I managed to choke out a thank you to the giver of the peculiar gift, who explained to me that the bricks were simply a way of throwing me off the scent of the pen knife; if
I had snuck a shake of the gift while no one was looking I would not have guessed that it contained a one and three-quarter-inch blade. Truer words were never spoken; that’s right, I would never have guessed.
I received many thoughtful and fun presents that year, but the mega-cool, always-wanted-it-and-couldn’t-possibly-live-without-it motorcycle was not one of them.
For weeks I regarded that pen knife with scarcely contained disdain. But in the spring, the knife found its way into my pocket every now and then, and eventually I did not leave home without it. Its precise, sharp blade fashioned countless wooden arrows and cut through the twine of ingenious traps I set for bad guys in the backyard.
It came in handy on camping trips and helped me to mark park benches and tree stumps with a set of timeless initials commemorating my time there. That knife remains an enduring memory of my childhood, of a time when the everyday adventures of my imagination eclipsed the machinations of advertising.
Maybe my own kids will find some version of bricks under the tree this year.
Chris Dagenais is a North Shore resident and a regular contributing writer to the North Shore News. His weekly restaurant review column runs in the Wednesday issue of the paper and online at nsnews.com. Contact: [email protected].
