2 Responses to “Another Adventure with the Ready Rangers”

1. Mark
   December 30th, 2009 at 3:35 pm

   

   Hmmm… I always wanted one, but this always seemed like a really cool-looking, albeit useless-in-real-life kit.

   P.A. Horn is useless, does not summon any help. “Countless” signals are required from the (weak?) signal light to get a reply. No evidence of a Morse Code chart so the kids can actually communicate with the tower. No matches, flint, or any other way to start a fire to keep warm and stave off attacks by wild animals.

   On the other hand, these kids seem kind of dumb to go around calling themselves Rangers. When trapped by a rockslide, they don’t simply climb over the rocks or just go back the way they came. Instead, they choose to be trapped and spend the night out in the woods, requiring an expensive airlift rescue. They need a gadget to find the North Star, which is pointless anyway since they aren’t going anywhere. Can’t read a map, which would tell them how far they are from the park, and where they are. They need a periscope to see a bright, plainly obvious signal light from the tower. Doesn’t seem like they’ve told anyone where they’ve gone in case they don’t show up after a while.

   How many would-be Rangers, I wonder, even now are littering the Wilderness, nothing more than skeletons enshrouded in orange plastic ponchos, stretched out on the ground with with Ready Ranger kits set up like little tombstones in front of them?

2. A windowshopper
   July 15th, 2010 at 7:18 pm

   

   Ah, the stuff that adventurous dreams are made of! I remember seeing this ad on the backs of comic books, my mouth watering at imagined dangers overcome with the help of this highly technical and utterly practical backpack! Lucky was the lad who found one of these beneath their Christmas tree, methinks. I’ve seen cynical reactions to this toy on other blogs. It’s perhaps not one of the greatest toys, but it at least offered the prospect of high adventure without a rubber knife or simulated firearm.