Developer Reflections: A Yellow Truck

When we were creating vehicles for Ellie Finch's Playmode Academy Minecraft Education Sandtray World, we wanted a wide range of types and colours; a nice yellow truck was second on the to-do list.

This one was in part inspired by a toy Tonka truck I had as a child (and still have... I've included an image of it as well), and in part a moving truck my family once rented when I was five... so it's a bit of a mashup of both.

The toy truck was not one of my favourites, but it has endured in my memory due to how it ended up in my collection. My dad had to purchase it as a replacement for another toy (a jeep) I'd insisted on bringing into a shop with us, which was in due course, nicked from our trolley when we went into the shop cafe for a plate of chips and gravy. I was pretty distraught. I had of course been warned in advance about bringing it in with me and the Tonka truck was the quickest, easiest way of getting me to stop whinging.

The moving van I have strong memories of as well. When you're six, most things can be an adventure and I was fascinated by the wee kid sized door that you could use to slip between the front cab and the back compartment, and bouncing around inside the storage area. I remember not being allowed to do this while the truck was moving... I was supposed to remain quiet, in the bottom of the footwell of the passenger side. In retrospect, it occurs to me now that even in the 80s this was an extremely dodgy move on my parents part and I'm still baffled why they brought me on such a long unsafe drive when I could have been left with multiple relatives...

Anyway! It's a nice yellow truck with a backstory!