The J-Clan is moving to California this summer. As part of that, they have been storing a huge mass of junk in half of our garage (they rented a storage locker as well and filled that too — that they’re moving to a new house that will be about half the square footage as their current house should be very cozy for them). Part of this refuse was a Barbi© Power Wheels™ electric car. Alice noticed it one day and fell in love. She would not infrequently spend time in the garage just to sit in it. When we mentioned that it belonged to Jessie, Alice would immediately respond “We should have Jessie over for a visit!”.
Luckily, it didn’t work because the batteries had worn out. Mom, for some masochistic reason, located replacement batteries while on a shopping expedition for toys for a birthday party. Because we are weak, we bought the battery even though it a serious chunk of change. We had, unfortunately, presumed the the car came with a built in charger. Oh no, not at all! The battery charger is completely external and, natrually, lost somewhere in the mass of junk.
The battery came with enough charge that Alice could go out for a brief spin. She sort of liked it, but didn’t really grasp the concept of steering. Her normal Charles-powered car has a steering wheel but it’s not connected to anything — Charles does the actual steering (one of the features of rear Charles drive!). I ended up fetching out Charles to ride with Alice and show her how to work the car. Charles barely fits in it, but Alice thought it was great to have Charles driving, enough that she tried her hand at the wheel a bit. In the end, I mail ordered the charger, despite it being expensive as well. I suspect that it would have been cheaper and easier to have bought the car and dumped it intead.