I’ve had it. I’m done. This world is full of so much joy and wonder, and yet there are so many forces that seem to be dedicated to making it into some bland, soulless nightmare of avarice and mindless status-grubbing. We fight against it the best we can, but then sometimes we’re dealt such a blow that it’s hard to go on. I feel like such a blow was dealt today, a blow that makes me fear for our very own children, and what makes this blow so painful is the source: Little Tikes, makers of the legendary childhood automotive icon, the Cozy Coupe.
I’ve believed in the pure childhood joy of the Cozy Coupe for decades. It’s the car of childhood, it’s how you got around. When you’re four or five and have a busy playdate schedule and strict naptimes and a stack of coloring this high that’s not gonna color itself, the Cozy Coupe is how you got around to make everything happen. The Cozy Coupe is childhood.
And, sure, I’ve voiced my concerns when I’ve felt there were design missteps in the Cozy Coupe, like when they briefly moved the eyes out of the headlamps, but overall I’ve been a staunch supporter of this delightful little ketchup-and-mustard-colored little wheeled plastic vehicle. But now? Now Little Tikes has gone too far, and in the process has turned their back on a whole planet full of children. They call it the “Cloud Collection.” I call it an abomination, urinating in the face of everything good and right about childhood.
Here’s what Little Tikes sent us to promote this atrocity:
Little Tikes is giving the classic Cozy Coupe a clean, timeless white redesign as part of its new Cloud Collection, bringing the beloved childhood ride into the world of today’s design-conscious homes. And while the look may be refreshed, everything that matters most remains the same… the durability and quality Little Tikes is known for, proudly made in the USA, and the active, imaginative play that has been at the heart of the brand for nearly six decades.
The white Cozy Coupe is available for preorder today, September 9, ahead of the Cloud Collection’s Amazon launch on September 15.
First, and most importantly, fuck off, Little Tikes. “Bringing the beloved childhood ride into the world of today’s design-conscious homes?” You know what they mean by this, don’t you? This isn’t “design-conscious.” And the fuck do they mean by “today’s” design-conscious homes? No one in the past cared about how their homes looked? That’s utter horseshit. What Little Tikes is talking about is the miserable recent trend of beigification, where, for whatever insipid reasons, popular culture seems to be sucking the color out of everything, and there have even been studies showing this to be true. We see it happening in car colors, of course, but it’s everywhere. It’s like the world is on a mission to make every habitable space look like some stupid boring-ass AirBnB, where the color palette is limited to what you might see on a plate of fried food, with the occasional bit of drywall or bathtub caulk thrown in.
The very notion that Lil Tykes is making this bleached, color-desaturated shell of a Cozy Coupe to better fit in with the fiercely orchestrated bland home decor of boring people with zero notable design ideas, taste, or courage, is appalling. I mean, look at this shit:
What kid wants that? What kid is going to be excited about a room with all the color sucked out of it? The kind of kid that hopes for a pack of crayons like these, I imagine:
And “imagine” is what I have to do. Because no kid wants this. The reason this is such a miserable betrayal is because this Cozy Coupe is the first one designed for parents’ needs and wants over the kids. And even worse, these needs and wants are garbage. Boring, bland, beige basura.
If you’re a mom or dad who has held off from getting your kid something fun because it has too much color that won’t work in your carefully curated color-free, all-natural tones taupe nightmare of a home, then guess what? You’re a lousy parent. And your home is boring and stupid and your natural fiber beige clothes make you look like a dumpy peasant, you miserable sack of farina-colored shit.
Look at this image Little Tikes is using. What a fucking joke. Give that little girl some fucking colors to enjoy! Look at those triangular pennants on that shelf of stupid woven baskets. They’re as colorful as anything gets here, and the colors – beige, almost brown, nearly mint, and light beige – have colors like La Croix has “flavors.” It’s a barely hanging-on memory of colors, like a belch of flavor into seltzer water.
This is all miserable. Why are they doing this? These poor desaturated Cozy Coupes even have a sort of creepy, ghostly feeling, like those white-painted bicycles left at locations were people died. It feels funereal, like Victorian daguerreotype of a stillborn.
Little Tikes calls this a “clean, timeless white redesign,” but nothing could be further from the truth. This isn’t timeless; it’s a direct, trendy leaping upon of a current bandwagon of lazy, formless, conformist, joyless Instagram design trends. You know what actually is timeless? This:
If you’re a little kid reading this, and your selfish, social-media-obsessed, hyper-image conscious and tasteless parents saddle you with one of these alabaster nightmares, let me suggest a plan: add your own color to your Cozy Coupe. Do it any way you can: crayons, markers, paint, condiments, whatever it takes. But make that Cozy Coupe your own, and give it color, any colors you want! Don’t be subdued by the glum tyranny of beiges! Push back! You’re our only hope, because at this rate, if the Cozy Coupe has fallen to the Forces Of Desaturated Blandness, then what chance do we have.
Kids of the world, do what you love: color. We need you now more than ever.
All images: Little Tykes
The teen sensation Bleach Boys sang about this very vehicle 60+ years ago in their hit song “Little Tykes Coupe”:
Well I’m a frosty linen babe so don’t put me down,
But I’ve got the palest set of wheels in town,
When kids see my ashen ride they all start to howl,
Cause if it had a set of wings, it’d be a snowy owl,
It’s my Little Tykes Coupe, you don’t know bone from chalk.
This is acceptable only with red and blue stripes and a 53 slapped in the front, sides and back. And a ragtop.
Pandering Crap, complete with a dark-skinned child in their white world!
So Torch, tell us how you really feel about the Cozy Coupe redesign
I actually think they’re about five years too late to the beige baby trend. Late millenials and especially Gen Z are reportedly not really fans of beige.
Also beige and white plastic ends up looking really shit after about ten minutes with a toddler, covered in marks from scraping into things. These will look much more tatty than the traditional red/yellow Cozy Coupes in no time.
As someone who used to drive by a ghost bike on the way to a history of photography class, this sentence is pure fucking perfection.
I once tried coloring with an ennui crayon but soon grew listless and lost interest.
Two things: 1.) After being left in the back yard during one heavy rain, it’s going to look like it just came back from Burning Man. 2.) I WOULD like to see it’s counterpart, the “Murdered Out” Cozy Coupe.
Why SpongeBob why? Who on earth thought landlord white Little Tikes cars was a good idea? Oh wait, all those idiots who thought painting a Tudor house all white and removing every trace of character was “modern”
Just in time shipments of yellow and red master batches were late, I think.
The proper term is “greige”. And yes, it’s a cancer.
Looksmaxxing has come for our children.
Cloud Collection is to Cozy Coupe as Casper is to Richie Rich. Cozy Coupe is dead and this is its ghost.
Thank you for this, Torch.
Yeah but the kids will still pitch a fit when you get rid of the thing, even though they don’t fit in it anymore
Not if you bring out the switch they won’t.
If I’ve learned anything in the past ten years, it’s this: NEVER THROW OUT YOUR KIDS’ TOYS. Even if they don’t care. In 40 years when their generation is middle-aged and nostalgic they’ll be able to sell that crap on AI eBay or whatever for stupid money. Go try and buy a Stomper right now if you don’t believe me.
Winter storm raging outside, minimal snow accumulation but whiteout blowing conditions, visibility low.
911 call: “911 responders, how can we assist you?”
Frantic parent: “my child, unknown to us, went wandering around out in the storm and we can’t locate them, please help!”
911: “ok, take a deep breath, now tell me the situation so we can assess it”
FP: “well, we recently got our child a Cozy Coupe and they can’t stop driving it around, so they apparently took it outside to play as they love going up and down the the sidewalk in it. We looked outside for Cozy Coupe tire tracks but the winds have blown them smooth, we can’t see well in the storm and couldn’t find them in our short seach!”
911: “ok, you say they’re driving a Cozy Coupe, that should be easy for emergency vehicles to find as they’re that very visible yellow/red color, I’ll put the word out to look for a small child in a red/yellow Cozy Coupe”
FP: “yes, it’s a Cozy Coupe, but in the new Cloud white color!”
911: “let me get this straight, the Cozy Coupe is basically the color of snow, and I imagine the child will be wearing a matching white snowsuit?”
FP: “yes, they just look so precious wearing the white snowsuit in their Cloud White Cozy Coupe!, that, uh, won’t hinder the search by the emergency search team will it?”
911: (face palming before composing themselves), “um, a white Cozy Coupe, a white snowsuit, and whiteout snow storm conditions, (few seconds of silence), we are sending a emergency search team to your location, please assist them all you can, but I gotta be honest with you, you may have just sentenced your child to death because of your fashion choices for your child, good day to you” (click)
The cozy coupe is trash no matter what color it is. The angle is all wrong for the legs. You have no leverage and you can’t use your own weight to propel yourself at all.
To be fair, it wasn’t really designed for adults to ride
Ohhhhhh. That explains why the interior feels more “painful” than “cozy”….
Next week, after the backlash, they will introduce the black one; only they won’t call it that.. what will they call it to avoid offending?
Black Editions seem to work just fine for Mercedes, Honda, Volvo, BMW and Porsche. No one’s offended.
Geesh, it’s fine. I thought I was the reactionary one around here.
Wrong
Found the Little Tykes marketing director.
Next up, the all black Cozy Coupe, lowered and with tinted windows!
I was half expecting David to write about this since he has a little one. So there was an All white Vespa a few years ago, It was the Justin Beiber edition, this Little Tyke car reminds me of that
The way Jason was talking, I was expecting the Cozy Coupe to include a mount next to the steering wheel for the tyke’s first iPhone
Possibly the funniest Autopian article yet. Multiple full belly laughs. Well done.
And you’re of course 100% right.
I don’t get it, hasn’t society decided that the best way to depict something as boring or soulless is to depict it as colorless in media? Why would you want that for your kids?
The first things that came to mind are the book/movie the Giver, and this song/music video:
https://youtu.be/cCeeTfsm8bk?is=hN3zpaBKAJgTQ5HL
Kenna – Hellbent / Mark Osborne -More
I’m sure someone much more cultured than I can give a more honest review of the video, since it a bit on the nose about consumerism, but the images immediately came to mind.
my first thought was this thing isn’t going to be white for long. Blank white things are just begging to be crayon’ed, marker’d and painted. Top bins Torch, this one’s a doozy.