I don't want to grow up, I'm a Toys 'R' Us kid...

Day 30

First sold in 1979 as one of the first molded-plastic toy cars sold in the United States, the Cozy Coupe is a red and yellow toy car manufactured and distributed by Little Tikes. It was called the "world's best-selling car for much of this decade" by The New York Times in 1998, outselling the Honda Accord and Ford Taurus. As of 1991, the Cozy Coupe was selling 500,000 units per year, making it the top-selling model in the United States, outselling the 399,000 Accords and 299,000 Taurus vehicles sold that year. By 1997, its sales of 313,000 units in the US and another 100,000 sold in the United Kingdom in 1997, would have made it the fifth-best-selling car in the US among real vehicles.


In recent years in the United States, some models often on lists of most frequently stolen vehicles include Toyota Camry, Honda Civic, Honda Accord, Acura Integra, Jeep Cherokee, Cadillac Escalade and , of course, the Cozy Coupe. Police departments use various methods of recovering stolen vehicles, such as random checks (ANPR) of vehicles that come in front of a patrol unit, checks of all vehicles parked along a street or within a parking lot using automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) or keeping a watchlist  of all the vehicles reported stolen by their owners. Police departments also receive tips on the location of stolen vehicles. Recovery rates for stolen vehicles vary, depending on the effort a jurisdiction's police department puts into recovery, and devices a vehicle has installed to assist in the process.

Lately, the molded plastic wheels used on the Cozy Coupe have been used as an aphrodisiac in several South American countries.  It is currently unknown how or why this particular wheel is used, but countless children in the United States have been left without a means of transportation, relying now on bicycles, skateboards and Big Wheels.