Sean McFarland
This article was originally published on BBC Autos.
The Little Tikes Cozy Coupe, BBC Autos’ most recent Icons & Innovators subject, was the childhood equivalent of the Volkswagen Beetle: simple, cheap and effective.
Children found the red and yellow plastic hardtop an easy vehicle for driveway exploration, and parents found it a surefire way to keep a child engaged. The Cozy Coupe was tough, too, able to withstand the occasionally destructive force that is a child’s imagination.
But the appeal of an automotive “smash ‘em up” does not wane just because a child grows older. When the US comedy The Blues Brothers hit theatres in 1980, it did so with a smash-and-crash storyline heavy on gratuitous automotive carnage. Cozy Coupes may be a tight squeeze nowadays, but even the most severe cases of Peter Pan syndrome can be soothed with this piece of escapism.
YouTube user Bricktease employed stop-motion video and Lego in a shot-for-shot recreation of the mall chase in the movie. Audiences everywhere could view the pursuit through an Illinois shopping centre as a celluloid facsimile of their childhood fantasies. Filming the sequence brought about the destruction of 103 cars in total, a record for films at the time.
This colourful Lego tribute matches the calamities of the chase all the way down to the scattering patrons. The cars slide and tumble through the mall with awful handling as the film’s main characters casually take in all the newest retail additions.
Not quite the same as a Cozy Coupe demolition derby, but it scratches an itch.
Sean McFarland 