Radio Flyer's little red wagon rolls on

 

Love it or pretend to hate it, the Cloud 9, a brand new “concept” version of the time-honored little red wagon, plants the 90-year-old company at the vanguard of the 21^st century.

 

Like the original, it has four wheels and a tow handle for mom or dad. Add a sleek plastic chassis, an MP3 player dock, speakers, bucket seats, belts, cup holders and digital temperature/time/speed/distance readouts, and it’s enough, as CNN says, “to make the minivan jealous.”

 

From a branding perspective, it’s important that the company is staying true to its roots. Still a little red wagon, the Cloud 9 embodies and advances the company’s narrative in a way that a new, divergent set of cutting-edge toys wouldn’t (a first-person shooter, for example, might have missed the mark). Radio Flyer is fearless both in its loyalty to a product that was bound for obsolescence, and in its wholesale embrace of what’s now.

 

And they knew when enough updating was enough: there is no engine to be found.