By David Gewirtz
I remember Corgi cars pretty vividly. Back when I was six or seven years old, I was all about the Matchbox cars. Matchbox cars were diecast, about the size of a pack of gum. Corgi cars were their expensive big brothers, about the size of two packs of cards, stacked on top of each other. I remember Corgi because, to me at the time, they were very expensive and while my parents bought me a bunch of Matchboxes, they got me only one or two Corgis.
Of course, the last time I held a Corgi car in my hand, Lyndon B. Johnson was president and the anti-war protests were about Vietnam. It was a long time ago.
Taking the iCar out for a drive
Even so, when the folks at Corgi called me up and asked if I'd like to look at their new iCar, I couldn't pass it up. It was like my happy childhood was calling on the telephone.
Sadly, childhood ends, you go to work, get older, rounder, more jaded, and discussions about defecation actually become interesting and relevant.
Which brings us to the iCar, pictured in Figure A.
FIGURE A
The iCar is dances and flashes in semi-tune to your music. (click for larger image)
You can connect the iCar to any MP3 player, but, of course, the company really promotes it as an iPod accessory. With a suggested retail price of $39.95, it's not terribly expensive. Sadly, though, it's tacky, crappy, cheesy, and disappointing. Other than a few minutes of chuckle value, it's also not worth almost $40.
Let's not even try to figure out the appropriate age for this thing. Little kids might like it, but how many really little kids can be trusted with an iPod? Any kid over the age of 12 is likely to think this is silly. And any adult with an iCar is an adult who's just ... well, let's just say that you shouldn't buy this if you ever, ever want to get a date with the opposite sex.
Rating the iCar
Rating the iCar becomes difficult because I'm a curmudgeonly adult, not whoever the typical consumer might be for this thing. That said, there are some simple tests we can use to see whether it's worth your money.
Sound quality
Let's start with the most obvious: how does it sound? Did you ever buy a pair of cheap, $10 speakers to connect to your PC? If you did, then you know how this sounds. Sound quality was distorted on all but the quietest playback and it played just like you might expect a small, low-quality, inexpensive speaker to play.
Model quality
As I said above, I haven't held a Corgi in my hands since the sixties, but back then, they were really solidly produced diecast metal. Of course, everything changes over time, but apparently Corgi still produces high-quality diecast metal cars. I say "apparently" because the iCar is not high-quality metal. It's cheap, injection-molded plastic.
