Our own overlord @dave bought this selfsame train on Amazon back in 2014 and says, “It’s pretty much a train that goes around your Christmas tree.” Sage words, @dave.
Some Amazon reviewers claim that this train will occasionally fall off the tracks, and @dave agrees — he’s seen it happen before. But he disagrees with these reviewers who see this as a negative. To him, half the fun of any toy, especially a model train, is making it malfunction.
It’s true — who wants a train that never falls off its tracks? That’s like wanting to watch a soap opera where the couples seek counseling and work through their problems in a calm, productive manner. To wit, boring.
We’re not saying toy trains should immediately malfunction (this one doesn’t). But they should be capable of malfunction in a way that satisfies our inner anarchistic Buster Keatons.
With the Yin of a toy’s proper function must come the Yang of destruction and malfunction. We all want our Flutterbye Fairy to live long, happy lives. But we also enjoy a deeply rooted pleasure when she is cast into the proverbial barbie:
And however satisfying it is to watch an expertly executed domino demonstration, we enjoy domino fail videos with equal (or greater) relish.
Indeed, there’s a reason that “fail” videos are an enormously popular YouTube genre unto themselves, while “succeed” video are, to our knowledge, not.
This reason lies somewhere deep in the human psyche. A place that watches figure skating and roots for them to fall. A place that finds itself navigating to /r/holdmybeer in the wee hours. A place that sets up a train track around the Christmas tree and immediately imagines ways to derail it.
Yes, this train my not run with shinkansen-like precision. But, to paraphrase @dave, we wouldn’t want it if it did.
