back to basics toys®, have you no mercy?

His wounds were just beginning to heal from the Great Marble Run Disappointment of 2007, when we get our new Back to Basics Toys catalog today.

We begin to page through it. Lahdee dah, dumdee dum. Then it was as if the brakes squealed and he turned back the page. Wait just one moment, what do we have here? It's MARBLE MANIA EXTREME!!! Complete with automatic lifter. There was a little crying when he realized the photo wasn't going to instantaneously materialize into the real thing. I tried to cheer him up by giving his elevator-less marble thing the major hard sell. "Buddy, we can build it up really high!...We can put a bunch of roundy-roundy things in it!"

He sat down to play with his very own marble thing. And as he sniffed back his tears, he said in the most pathetic sad voice, "Can we pretend it has an elevator?"

And because you can never hear enough about balls or marbles in this blog, here is the boy's new favorite video. How's this for a blast from the past?