.FLYINGHEAD WACKY IPOD ACCESSORIES
.TITLE Escalade your iPod with the Corgi iCar
.AUTHOR David Gewirtz
.SUMMARY Corgi recently introduced a unique approach to iPod speakers. Their iCar is a Cadillac Escalade that "flashes, jumps, dances, and pumps up the volume" in tune to the iPod’s music. Just how good or bad is this thing? You’ll have to read our review to find out.
.OTHER
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.
.H1 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.
.FIGPAIR A The iCar is dances and flashes in semi-tune to your music.
.TEASER So, is thing thing worth your money? Tap here to read our full review.
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.
.H1 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.
.H2 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.
.H2 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.
How can I help you picture this? Got it! Have you ever gone to McDonalds and gotten a Happy Meal with a prize? You know those things? They’re little plastic toys, with very little texture, injection molded in a single color, and pumped out by the millions. The Corgi iCar feels like that. It’s almost like you’d expect to find it in a Happy Meal.
.H2 Animatronics
The iCar has a small amount of bling factor. It’s got a bunch of LEDs that light up, the wheels spin, and the car rocks back and forth and up and down. I was so amused, I shot an 11-second piece of video that I dumped up on YouTube. If you want to see this thing (and prepare to chuckle), you can watch the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUL4pyCncUA. Note that we uploaded the video without sound to avoid any music copyright issues. The iCar is particularly amusing when played to "Genie in a Bottle". As you can see from the video, it looks really cool.
There’s a big problem with the animatronics (beyond the quintessential tackiness of it all). When the animatronics are active, the wheels spin. Unfortunately, the spinning wheels are quite loud (they’re about as loud as one of those small radio-control cars Johnny might play with) and they interfere with what little audio quality the device is already putting out. Listening to anything while the wheels are spinning is an exercise in tolerance.
And not the good kind of tolerance where we all get along, where people of the same sex can share in the same marital bliss and never-ending picture hanging fun we heterosexuals enjoy. I’m not talking about the good kind of tolerance where the lawn guy doesn’t try to save your soul because you were once one of them strange, uppity New Yawkers. I’m not talking about the good kind of tolerance where Republicans are like Arnie Vinnick and Democrats are actually capable of working together with other Democrats. No, I’m talking about the tolerance that keeps you from taking a 12-gauge to the guy running his fingers down the chalkboard for hours. That kind of tolerance.
.H2 Battery usage
The iCar has the option for an external 9V power adapter, but one doesn’t come with it. We recycled an ancient Packard Bell speaker adapter to power the thing. Alternatively, you could use a total of six AA batteries. Our iCar came with a set of six batteries installed, but they were dead on arrival.
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.H2 Overall rating
Whenever we’re really not sure how to rate a product, we turn to our rating chart. To get a rating of 4, the product has to be exceptional. A product rated a 3 is a good, solid, well-working product. To get a rating of 2, the product has to be non-functional or flawed in some serious way.
The iCar works, even if it’s very, very silly. Unfortunately, the loudness of the spinning wheels drops an already-bad level of sound-quality to the nearly intolerable, further reducing the usability of this gimicky product. The sound quality is the serious flaw that pushes the product into a 2 rating. We give it a "this is too silly for words" 2 out of 5.
One final note to Corgi. You can do better than this. In some part of your operation, you still make exceptional quality models. Make something that is a high-quality display of your high-quality models and uses great speakers. Charge $129 for it and sell it to iPod customers who like quality collectibles. Just be sure to take the suck out of it first.
.RATING 2
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.H1 Product availability and resources
For more information on the Corgi iCar, visit http://www.corgi-usa.com/code/icar_re_links.php.
To play our silly video demo, visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUL4pyCncUA.
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.BIO
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