As you’ve no doubt guessed, today’s Ask has sprung from the current Cozy Coupe kerfuffle. David’s own little tike has one of the Little Tikes cars – in the traditional mustard and ketchup scheme, thank you – but I do wonder if Delmar (not his real name) will remember it, being a toddler at all. I’m quite certain he’ll remember the ride-ons that follow (certainly this one), however, as the tools of kid-mobility are core memories for most of us, I believe.
Great swathes of us had some form of Marx Big Wheel, I’m sure, or one of the many knock-offs of the original blow-molded trike. Older readers may have been first-owners of metal pedal cars, and many 70s’ kids logged plenty of wheel time in hand-me-down genuine sheet-metal machines.
I bet far, far fewer of you inherited your ride from Russia. Antti Kautonen:
My dad brought this as a souvenir from post-Soviet Russia, probably in 1993 based on the plates. It’s a relatively popular pedal car, often seen in worse nick than ours. You can hook up a battery to power the headlights, but I can’t remember if we ever did. The original steering wheel broke off at some point and got replaced with a random red one. I’d like to fix it up for my kid, but OEM steering wheels for these are hard to get. Maybe it needs a wooden Nardi wheel in kid size.
I love that! The ride-ons of my youth included exactly one pressed-steel pedal vehicle, but it was a tractor, not a car. And it was not as fun as the plastic machines in the stable I shared with my sister. We each had our own Big Wheels, but we split seat time in one of the craziest kid-powered contraptions of the 1970s: the Marx Wild Rider.
This six-wheeler was hand-cranked, and was a reasonable facsimile for both the moon buggies of Space:1999 and the daily driver of The Banana Splits. Each crank drove the middle wheel via a chain, and by varying the speed of each crank, the Wild Rider would turn as tight or wide as you like, or even pirouette. What a machine.
A much later arrival on the scene was the Green Machine, which later became a Huffy product. It was the bigger, badder, but ultimately (to me) less satisfying follow-up to the Big Wheel. It was very cool with its rear-steer setup, but not very comfortable to ride, nor as efficient as the Big Wheel at putting power into the pedals. So, not a favorite.
Definitely favorites: the Sears go-kart and mini bike that came later when I was nine or so. I had a single-seater kart, and later the yellow bike above. It was absolutely miserable to ride off-road with that rigid frame and fork, but it was a blast to hot-foot around the oval I wore into the backyard.
What Were Your Favorite Ride-On Toys As A Kid?
Top graphic images: Marx
Honda ATC 90. Got it when I was about 10 or 11. My brother and I each had one, until a kid from a visiting family drove it into the windmill at high speed and bent the forks back enough that the front wheel was touching the engine.
Of course that happened the day they were leaving, and never said a word about it, so we got blamed for it and it never got repaired. Thanks Reed or Renae.
It’s amazing none of us kids ever seriously injured or killed ourselves on those things, and it’s no wonder the modern versions have four wheels.
Sure was a lot of fun while it lasted, though.
I had a Raleigh trike. Not the kind with the cranks directly on the front wheel—this was a proper chain-drive “granny’ trike, but kid-sized. Candy-apple red. Then I learned how to ride a bike and my sisters inherited it.
First I had a Little Red Wagon (!), a Green John Deere Tractor (Meh) and a Hobby Horse (Yeehaw!)
I also had a massive red steel Texaco Airport Tanker Truck with a cab that tilted to turn the front wheels – so I rode that too.
Then I had red Tricycle, and for my 4th B’day a Red Beetle pedal car like the one in “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” that I got after watching “The Love Bug”
Then I had a little blue bike w/ training wheels – until Dad took them off for some annoying reason and I had scraped up knees and palms too for what would not be the last time (and then Mom started buying me those awful Toughskins with the reinforcements in the knees that would start cracking and peeling after the second wash and they would scratch my knees worse than if I had just gotten scraped knees in a crash which I could always avoid)
Then my little Sister got a Big Wheel and I pulled the seat back off and rode the shit out of that stupid little thing (She messed with my Legos – so payback)
Then I got a silver 10 speed bike, and later started riding my Dad’s green 5 speed bike.
But my favorite was that little Red Beetle.
Gas powered Go-Kart. Mine was basically a moving dolly with a 3hp or 4hp Briggs and Stratton. Absolute death trap that everyone in my neighborhood ripped around on. Sigh… adulting sucks
My Dad brought home a go-kart he bought at a garage sale. I loved that thing!
Then the motor blew up. Dad procured another one somewhere (probably another garage sale), but this one was… different.
The motor it came with was the standard 3-4hp motor with a governor. This one was EASILY 8hp. Maybe 10. And no governor.
That thing would RIP. I remember blasting down our neighborhood street next to a car, and the driver kept looking over at me incredulously because I was pulling away from him.
Eventually, I jumped it, got some serious air, and snapped the rear axle on landing. End of go-kart. Alas…
And people still talk about Marxism like it’s a bad thing!
As a tween I had a go-kart (that my dad built) with a 5hp Briggs & Stratton engine; that got me started driving.
A few years before that, though, I had the opportunity to ride a Honda XL70. This was a 70cc dual-purpose (aka enduro) bike; it had lights and turn signals but even now I can’t imagine how useful it would have been on a paved road.
That was *mumble* years ago. The go-kart is long gone but I still have motorcycles. 🙂
Little Tykes had this really neat semi-truck that was blue and white and was a ride-on toy sometime in the early 90s. We had really smooth wood floors in our rectangle shaped house and I’d blast from one end to the other in that thing all day.
I never owned a Big Wheel of my own, nor any other ride on until I could ride a bike. But in preschool we had this one thing that was out of this world, hand cranked like the ATV in the article, except I remember it had just one big wheel at each side and a caster front and rear to keep you level. I never got to spend anywhere near as much time in that thing as I wanted, but when I got seat time in it it was great. Zero-radius turns, the crank handles were maybe one-half out from the hub so the speed was decent. It was nearly immobile for my pudgy little arms on anything but the smooth composition floor indoors, but on that floor it was like a magic carpet.
I just had a regular cheap-ass plastic Big-Wheel.
I had a bunch of 20″ BMX-style pedal-bikes, but I liked to make jumps out of stacked concrete blocks and sheets of plywood and jump over garbage cans so I broke a lot of frames and forks.
We had a VW rabbit pedal car and a Smurf mobile pedal car. At 5 we got a BMX, and at 10 we got to pick out a 10 speed at any garage sale we saw one. I had a red huffy, then a marron Fuji road bike.
I had a pea gravel driveway on a class-5 gravel road, and the closest pavement was the highway at the bottom of the mountain we lived on. So I didn’t get too many of the cool ride-on toys because hard plastic wheels just don’t work off pavement.
But my Huffy Thunder 50 BMX style bike was freaking awesome.
I had a Knight Rider “KITT” big wheel when I was 5. We lived close to my elementary school, my parents let me ride KITT to my kindergarten open house where I introduced myself as Michael Knight and my dad as Boomer Esiason…
Thank you for the honesty about the Green Machine. I just realized I’ve been carrying around residual shame for the last 50 years that my new Green Machine wasn’t as fun for 7 year old me than my old Big Wheel.
The front wheel could never get traction. Thought it was just me.
Thanks Peter—I feel spiritually lighter now having that load lifted from me.
It depends on whether you consider teenagers as kids. If so, then my favorite ride-on toy was named Karen.
I just had a basic tricycle, and of course, all metal except for the tires and the hand grips. Then it was bicycles of slowly increasing sizes. Before my license, friends had mini-bikes that I rode. Then my first motorcycle, a Honda Dream 305cc, at the age of 16!
I had the Spider-Man version of Green Machine. Red wheels, lever steering. Never saw another one like it.
I was horribly spoiled by my grandparents (first grandkid) so I had a garage worth of ride-on toys. Nothing motorized though.
A standard Hot Cycle
The Spider-man cycle.
AMF “Hot Seat”
pedal Jeep
pedal tractor with trailer
pedal F1 looking car thing
Lots of bicycles including a bad-ass BMX
Oh God, the Green Machine. A vehicle for small children whose sole purpose was to teach them that breaking the rear end loose is fun. I had one and loved it.
All I ever had was a bicycle, and even then not a great one – my dad worked in the airlines and brought one home from Indonesia. It had all kinds of doo-dads like reflectors and fenders and looked really cool but fell apart basically right away.
I still miss my yellow Kettcar.
Kettcar FTW! My son is almost 11 years old and has just outgrown mine from 1978, but I’m keeping it for the grandkids…
Easy, little tikes spourt coupe. Yellow. Pedal driven front wheels and a crazy lever steering setup with rear wheel steering. Could really toss that thing around. None of that cozy coupe crap from me.
A bicycle.
Big Wheel, then to bikes, then a Honda Trail 50, then a Honda CR(?) 125
Big Wheel, definitely the Big Wheel.
The machine that taught Gen X how to drift a front-wheel-drive.