It definitely takes skill to do operate excavator/front-end loader / backhoe etc with any amount of efficiency, but if you don't care how slow you are you can do pretty much any residential task anybody else can do almost right off the bat and it is definitely a blast.

I dug the footings for my house on my first day ever on a backhoe, the next day I removed a few trees and built a road, then I rented an excavator and did all my underground electric in one weekend and underground water main in another. All with no experience with any large machinery nor any electrical or plumbing experience, so the weekend comments can definitely be incredibly valid.

If you've ever wanted to try this, I highly recommend "Dig This" in Las Vegas. They'll teach you the basics and then put you in a an excavator or bulldozer, with an open course full of big heavy things to move around. It's great fun.

https://digthisvegas.com/

Renting a skid steer for a long weekend and getting kinda good at it was deeply satisfying. Also that experience of digging a hole for hours, and then using a scoop to dig the same hole in seconds, and it feeling like you’re digging through jello.

That's hilarious. I can only imagine landing there in a helicopter and it being used as a free additional show for all the kids there.

It's because if some Karen sees your kid with a real looking hammer anywhere near actual work, (s)he's gonna rat your ass out to CPS faster than you can snap your fingers.

Similarly for toy guns. The weird look ain't for the kids, it's so some passerby doesn't see the "gun" and call the cops (no matter there is no regulation in most states from making a real gun to look like a toy gun so it's a totally bogus presumption).

I grew up in a construction family. I didn't have this problem. I was given a real hammer and real nails and scrap wood to nail together. It was a shite hammer but real. It was probably only a light 8oz hammer, but I was at the real worksite with my pretend project. I'm sure some OSHA rules were broken, but it was weekends only and most of the crew was off, but it was real enough to kid me then.

But yeah, if someone gave me a red and blue smiley face toy tool, I'd be like WTF is this? Then again, my dad would have said the same thing without the cutesy internet acronyms.

You would not be the first:

https://bigbananacar.com/

I guarantee you if you build that bananamobile you will find plenty of uses for it! Don't hold back!

Maybe you can buy a used wiener mobile and unlock the banana skin for it.

There's a special edition that includes the creation process in the back along with some copies of the intermediate stories. Quite a bit of story telling a well.

This is to avoid trademark dilution, which in the USA can invalidate a trademark. Aspirin, for instance, used to be a trademark of Bayer, but these days is generic.

I did not regularly hear the term "game console" until the late 90s. I used to think the promotion of this term was done by Nintendo in a trademark-protective maneuver to avoid rival systems being called "Nintendos" by granny, but it seems I was mistaken. Nevertheless, in the 80s we called them systems. Which system do you have, Nintendo or Sega?

Recently in my retrogaming media habit I've heard "console" used occasionally to describe video game consoles in advertisements dating back to the early 80s, but at that time it was also used by Texas Instruments to refer to the TI-99/4A computer. TI was naming all of their home products to give a space-age technical feel to them. They marketed joysticks as "Wired Remote Controllers", and cartridges for the TI-99/4A as "Command Modules" or "Solid State Software". So I don't think "console" referring to a gaming device specifically was a term of art back then.

That's a really cool device, but I'm kind of sad that it needs to exist