Boys and their toys

What is it with boys and matchbox cars? I was working today and two of the boys were playing with cars. I rememeber playing with cars when I was little and I loved it, I still do sort of I guess. But I am not a car guy by any means. I have no mechanical inclinations and I do not ohh and ahh at sports cars or really any cars. I do like some trucks, but even that is not the obsession that I know some guys have with cars. I think that it must me so ingrained in our cultural teachings that little boys just do like playing with cars. I had a mother who I know tried not to expose her two boys to the cultural misogyny that says that boys play with certain toys and girls play with other toys and yet I did love cars. I had a doll as well when I was little (kind of like a cabbage patch doll, but my mom made it), so I didn't just play with cars or guns (well we weren't allowed to have guns, but still...). I just started to think about this. I also see in my classroom boys that like to play in the dramatic play area with the kitchen set and dress-up clothes, but I rarely see little girls who play with the cars to race and bang them into each other. The little girls do like the blocks and will build as much as the boys, but there seems to be something about the cars that just holds a fascination for little boys. Maybe we are already beginning to try and compensate for penis size at a young age and hopefully some of us grow out of that, but it still was an interesting observation for me.