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| 1980. While all the other kids in N.Y. were playing with Storm Shadow and Gung-Ho, Sixth Borough tykes had Tricycle City. Sort of a G.I. Joe/Micronauts hybrid -- it was a strange knock-off toy line that came to Zaghaven by way of a "lost" shipping container. The 6th Borough mob is Venusian -- and most of their activities are centered around the merchant trade - textiles, novelties, sneakers. Whatever the toys once were (a Spanish or Argentinian attempt at a Joe bootleg) they became a Venusian repackaging of an already oddly interpreted version of an American Strike Force that fought a super-enemy. Good guys were called "Crack Team". There were many Drons, Clonstars and Norks in the Sixth. |
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| While the Bad guys were R.E.P.T.O. Some boxes seemed to be badly reprinted while others just had stickers covering up the original names. Many kids had a Gornax, a Cranax and a Montrak. |
This was how Tricycle City began -- stolen, repackaged, bootlegged, and resold. A lot of people think it's why the Toys of Zaghaven eventually woke up and fought for their freedom. Why they made Tricycle City a society of toys - toys who's brands didn't matter, who's brokenness wasn't an issue, and who didn't need a kid to play with them to feel as if they were worth something.
WHAT HAPPENED
By 1989, home video games had put many good-toys in a bucket, where they were dormant and bored.
It was a Gornak that just sat up on a Tuesday afternoon, as if he could have done it from the first day he was manufactured. He looked over at a Dron. They were supposed to be enemies, but the Gornak felt no animosity.
"I think we've been fighting the wrong battle," he said to the Dron.
But the Dron wasn't awake yet. So the Gornak shook him until he was.
The Dron said, "Thank you my friend. I feel alive!"
"Yes," said the Gornak, "Soon all the toys shall live. And we'll need to stick together if we're going to be free."
"You make good sense for a R.E.P.T.O. Maybe we should all escape and carve out our own place."
"That... is an extraordinary idea, Dron. We could take to the walls."
And they did. Many toys followed suit. Bendies, Japanese Robots, Wind-ups, Stuffed Animals.
That is how Tricycle City became so much more than a toy line. How it became an ideal.
HOW DID THE TOYS WAKE
Three major theories.
1. Z-Kids used so much imagination on the toys that they sprang up. Yeah right. I heard some dumb parents at Blue Kills playground spouting that shit. Parents lose perspective. Z-kids are as dumb as any other kid.
2. The Sixth Borough lies between reality and surreality. We sit on a wormhole, we're out of sync with the time/space continuum, we're electromagnetic and all split up. These things are true -- but they're more like reasons why the Sixth Borough is WACK. We're behind, we're disappearing, we might explode, we might get sucked into a vacuum. There's nothing there that's gonna bring a TOY to LIFE.
3. The Candy Factory. In all seriousness -- if there's something funny going on here -- it's because of the Candy Factory. There's a lot of good and bad in that place. A lot of things that have happened are unexplainable -- but there's the Vapor. One thing that we all know is that -- the Candy Factory simply cannot contain THE VAPOR that emanates from it's creations. The Vapor is the source of the weirdness. Some think the Vapor is good. Some think it's not.
