When I was in my snot-nosed toy craving prime as a child I hated the kids in the 1980s Tonka Truck commercials. Why? Not because they had the trucks because I had most of them too, but because of how and where they played with them. There was always some cool creek, mud hole, or other sort of ready made adventure land for them to roll over, through, or around. Meanwhile, I was rocking out in the front or back yard like every other kid in the country. Maybe I was not the only one that hated these damned kids. Did you? (They are probably all well-adjusted, nice people now. Back then they were the enemy).
I wrote a piece recently that showed some of the ads that Tonka had run through the ages and they were all good. These were good too. The magic in the Tonka trucks was not what they did, any sort of advanced technology, or anything like that but instead the fact that they served as the vehicle (literally) to unlocking your imagination. How many scenarios or adventures did you go on in your mind with a Tonka truck? Thousands probably.
So as much as I hated these kids for their cool places to play, I was also one of them. Beating on, pushing around, flipping over, and zipping along a Tonka truck. Heck, those things probably have a large role to play in what my life is today. See, that feels better. I only hate them half as much now.
The drag strip scene appears to be at OCIR in 1983 at the working truck drags.
I grew up surrounded by tobacco fields back home. There’s probably Gi-Joes still buried out in those fields.