you meet the nicest superheroes...

i picked up a book at the library the other day of teen titan comics from the 60's. i was too busy to read it the first day and my son started to read it instead. as we were driving in the car he said "hey dad, why do all the superheroes ride hondas?" "what?!" then he showed me one of the stories he was reading. sure enough, all the teen titans were on supercubs sans helmet. i checked the original publish date on these - 1965. that was just about the time all of soichiro honda's marketing in north america was starting to pay off.
i kept reading hoping the teen titans would end up running into a bunch of nasty bikers on big harleys and get into some kind of fracas. they did meet a gang of high school dropouts, who rode little bikes too. it made me realize what a different time it was. back then you could walk into a dealership and find choices from 50cc on up in 10cc increments. nowadays you can hardly find a street ride smaller than 250. which is why i was so excited when i saw the return of the supercub recently. well ok, it's not a true honda, but it is produced by sym, the company that has produced the cub all over the world for the past 20 years or more. who knows, maybe we'll see a whole new generation of post-emo kids riding through city streets on these and actually smiling.