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
They catering to the IG market because this beige, desaturated look is so hawt right now. Very popular with Mormon influencers and culture in general. I dig the dirty sodas they popularized, but I can’t get on board with the beigification.
Where’s Harold and his purple crayon.
Understood.
https://youtu.be/D8uRO3D12vs?si=7QeKDsW3AK3Ci-En
If you think you can maintain a clean orderly house with that many white surfaces with kids in the house, you’re fucking delusional. I guarantee that car ain’t staying “cloud colored” past the first day.
On the other hand, if my kids were that age I would get them that and a lot of paint. The regular ones don’t really take paint well.
I can feel the rage of every keystroke. Torch probably needs a new keyboard after writing that one.
And, I hate to tell him, but my kid’s Cozy Coupe wasn’t the traditional yellow and red, but pink body and white top. I hope that having those colors isn’t sacrilegious to him.
But agree wholeheartedly on the rage on the Cloud Collection. I mean, do the people at Little Tykes even HAVE children? These design conscious homes aren’t really even FOR children, are they? Those parents are going to have a conniption when little Jane or Johnny paints on those design conscious walls with marker, chocolate or their own feces. The Cozy Coupe Cloud will look like crap (literally or figuratively) very quickly because a toddler will appoint any surface with a stain that won’t come out.
You have kids, you get them to an age where they technically should not defecate, urinate or paint anything not designed (which seems to be a sliding scale for sure), THEN you get nice stuff as long as the children have not otherwise bankrupted you. I redid my floors and threw out a carpet so disgusting and discolored, it had to be a biohazard between toddlers and dogs. And it looked like crap for years, but when another marker stain or pee stain appeared, I didn’t utterly and completely freak out as I would have had it been a new carpet.
Wernor Herzog’s sad beige toys for sad beige children.
I love Torch’s prose and this just honestly cracked me up, despite my fierce incapacity for such behavior lately.
Related: I’ve been in the Adrian Clarke school of gothic comportment for decades, leaning heavily into the color palette of vampires. Then, recently something in me snapped and I bought some red chinos, followed up with barber pole socks, an orange knit sweater and a lovely avocado hued leather jacket, and it feels goooood to knife through crowds of my dun and black appareled peers.
We’re doing our part! Through my in-law’s bank account, we have 1 baby porsche for each kid: a Lizard Green, a Carrera Red, and a Miami Blue 911. Let the colors live on!!!
Dad’s 73 Bonneville was Forentine Red. There were 17 other colors. Mom’s Lemans Safari was Verdant Green of 13.
I hope it is a sales flop. I also hope the buyers will be bent over sobbing while wiping down the sticky surfaces with Lysol wipes to get the white surfaces clean.
This was my thought too. What reasonable parent wants their kids stuff to be white?!
It will stay that way for all of 30 seconds, until the first time the kid touches it. In a month, their entire “timeless beige” room will be a disgusting morass of handprints and other stains. (crayon, paint, dirt, food, vomit, poop, etc. even after cleaned, all leave discoloration.)
The only people who think this is a good idea are the ones who pay both a Nanny, and a full time Housekeeper just to follow the kid around keeping things spotless; and fuck them.