Monday, January 31, 2011

Maddeningly Unhelpful Monday--The Minivan

Please forgive me, readers, while I direct this bit of advice to the makers of minivan ads. Minivans will never be cool.

Never.

But that's okay, they are very useful vehicles. I should know, I own one. But, ads that try to convince me that they are cool are a waste of money. I don't care how big their speakers are or if fireworks go off when I look at the van. I don't care if rabbits and deer find the atmosphere in and around the van peaceful. I don't even care if rose petals float out the door and giant clams are singing in the trunk. No such van is going to make me drop my perfectly paid for bag of groceries.

Please, just tell me how your van is going to entertain my children. How it will keep me from getting lost despite high levels of volume in the car. How easy it will be to wipe boogers off the walls. And the millions of different compartments available for my kids to hide food in until it saturates the air with its rotting fragrance.

Now, if in the future, you come up with a way to stop the sound in the back seats from traveling to the front seats of the car, or a self vacuuming floor, that might be something to make me drop my bag of groceries over. Thank you.

What features would you like to see in the future minivan?

11 comments:

  1. A sound barrier and self cleaning seats and floors sound great! I think one that could navigate and then drive for you would be wonderful... we could just sit there in silence eating chocolate enjoying the view!

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  2. Aw, come on, you don't think a van is a swagger wagon, even after all the cool rapping-family Toyota commercials?

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  3. Those are great ideas, Kasie. In fact, a self-vacuming house, would be terrific, too. Oh, and how about that self-cleaning bathroom? Maybe you should look into a career in product development. I mean, with all the free time you have on your hands. :-)

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  4. I love your ideas. I just graduated out of the minivans a month ago after 3 in a row. It's been an adjustment, but I love my car.

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  5. Annette, yes, a self driving van would be awesome. I'll get behind you on that one.

    Candice, those rapping commercials are actually better than the ones I'm referring to. But yeah, even those are stretching it.

    Linda, yes, the world is behind in the self-cleaning department. The inventors seemed to think they were done with the self cleaning oven. They were sorely mistaken. They need to get back to work.

    Lois, I'm on my second. They are very useful. What car did you graduate to?

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  6. When it senses whining coming from one of it's passengers it blasts an air horn right in their face. WAAAAH!!! Comes with corresponding phone app.

    My name is Heather and I'm on my third minivan.

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  7. Heather, YES! Work on that. I could go for that feature. :)

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  8. Seriously, why are all the features families need wasted on playtime vehicles like the FJCruiser? It can be HOSED OUT. I'm not kidding. Hello, design engineers. (I practically rolled on the floor laughing about the compartments for kids to hide food in--we have had the rotting food problem before!) We have moved on to a Suburban, which has no rotting food compartments, thank heavens. It also doesn't have as many places to lose toys and other objects. This doesn't mean that my kids don't try REALLY hard to mess it up. As a former minivan owner, I think all minivans should be hose-out-able, have built-in child safety seats, and NO places to hide stuff in that kids can reach. They can keep the compartments for parents, though--the awesome ones under the floor. Great idea!

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  9. Melissa, HOSED OUT????!!!! What? I NEED that! Seriously. That should definitely be a requirement for all minivans.

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  10. YES omg. My bf was just pointing out that fireworks commercial to me and rolling his eyes.

    Although those rapping mice make me slap my knee, but that's mostly because of all the punny twists they did on Manhattan street names...

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  11. Sound barrier would be my number one feature and maybe a fridge, so my kids can just help themselves instead of telling me they're hungry all the time.

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