K'nex

I used to play with K'nex all the time.  In fact, I was a K'nex prodigy back in my younger days.

But apparently while I've been distracted from the toy world over the last few years in college, the toy industry started taking steroids.

I stayed at some family's house in Richmond for shabbat last week, and look what I found:

Holy rollercoasters, batman!

This is some crazy engineering.  It's a double-flipping inverted criss-crossed ride from hell.  Even the name sounds bad-ass:

I'm lovin' the alliteration ;)

Despite the awesomeness of t his construction, I still think that the cars and rollercoasters and merry-go-rounds and buildings that I built with my K'nex sets (many decades ago) were superior to this modern marvel.  Specifically because I had to build each of my projects entirely from basic K'nex pieces.  They didn't provide specialty pre-fabricated pieces for the difficult parts of each project (Notice how the rollercoaster track is actually one long special piece that clips onto the frame.  LAME!)

Clearly the toy industry has lost its way.  It has put profits and cheap manufacturing above our passion for engineering.  Or perhaps kids these days just don't have the same skills my generation had when we were that age.  Or perhaps I'm reading too much into this whole situation.  But I digress.

In summary, K'nex are cool.