In our garage I have a section where my old toys live. Granted, it’s a small section but all of my old Tonka trucks live there. There’s a Jeep, dozer and crane. The crane is not working too well, but the dozer and the Jeep purr right along in our child’s sandbox with his modern toys. That distinctive yellow and black, plus the construction that gave it the mojo to last 40+ years. The new line of Tonka Metal Diecast Bodies is like that. They’ve got the same quality, have amazing detail and are built for play.
Tonka still makes the trademark yellow and black construction vehicles. They’ve just branched out into smaller vehicles that cover any work situation imaginable. An Ice Resurfacer, Excavator, Dump Truck, Tow Truck, Cement Mixer and more. If you can think of a truck that moves and does work Tonka probably has one for it at 1:55 scale.
From the moment you take it out of its box you can feel the quality. There is real metal, the tires feel soft, it really rolls across my desk and our kids are just screaming to play with them. These are kinds of toys that I’ll find in their garage in 30 years.
Put them on the top of the slide and they’ll scoot down with a vengeance. They’re small enough to put in your pocket or in your child’s special goodie bag to effortlessly take on those trips. Plus they’re fun, if a grown man is having trouble writing this because he’s too busy playing with them then you know it’s a fun toy.
When our children are 12 or so and stop playing with them we’ll load up the trucks into a special box for their future use. I don’t know how my Tonka toys from back in the day didn’t get disposed of during my parent’s many moves, but I’m thankful that they survived.
My favorite Tonka memory is watching my son play in the sand box on Christmas morning the one year we lived in Florida. Being from NY, that doesn’t happen. lol
My brother had a big Tonka dump truck that we use to play in the dirt with.