Holiday Gifts

My son got the coolest gift of for Channukkah, the kind of toy all young boys wish for, thanks to my dear sister-in-law.
It is some kind of post-apocalyptic cheetah robot transformer. His favorite thing about it might be that it scares his older sister ("Great! Now I'm going to have dreams about a cheetah chasing me!" she complains.)



The toy is so ferocious that it took 18 (!) twisty ties to keep it in the box. The mutant transformer genes also cause the cheetah to sport grasshopper legs that help it to become a robot in 12 easy steps. The box advises that this is an intermediate-difficulty transformer. I guess the advanced mutants have two-dozen steps. To transform from a cheetah to a robot, you must pivot the inner stomach around to the animal's back where it becomes the robot's rear armor (who knew that cheetah's were both ruminants and contortionists).



The packaging and configuration are actually a convenient litmus test; you know it will be a lifelong favorite if the child is still interested by the time you unpack and assemble it. The Dad in me objected to the plastic projectiles that shoot from the mutant's wrists, but secretly, I thought it was cool. My son thought the projectiles were icicles and wanted to cut the cheetah's head off with them. The cheetah's tail becomes the robot's actual sword, and by then the cheetah's head is already inside the body cavity of the robot.



Nostalgia warning: when we were kids, my parents would get one big Channukah present for the entire family. One year it was a ping-pong table, another year an Atari pong video game, and in 1979, it was a black Apple II (co-branded with Bell & Howell). I still have the black Apple II. In the long run, I'm glad they got us the computer, but the cheetah would have seemed much cooler at the time.



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What is the best toy someone else ever got for your kid?