Firetruck by NCT 127: brand & cost of MV props (analysis)

Hey guys! So I recently rewatched the Firetruck MV and noticed some gorgeous props. Here’s where I believe SM purchased them, for what prices, and how they modified them to achieve the MV’s signature blue-teal-orange look.

1. Toy State CAT Tough Tracks Construction Crew Dump Truck

Ah yes, the trademark yellow Caterpillar brand tractors or trucks, but in toy form. Toy State was founded in 1984 and cranks out this exact toy model used in the Firetruck MV at about $15 apiece, as sold on Amazon. We can see from the screencap that SM played with the coloring of the lemon-yellow toy to achieve the blue-teal-orange look of the MV.

We can also see from the Toy State website that this Dump Truck is probably the simplest and cheapest model of yellow CAT toy sold. This makes sense, since SM probably wanted to keep the prop budget low and draw attention to Firetruck’s saturated colors and surreal imagery (NCT spraying firehoses?!) over distracting details like an extra crane arm or window on the girl’s sandbox toy.

Also, Toy State works with “licensing partners” like Hot Wheels, Marvel, DC Comics, Barbie, and Thomas and Friends, not just CAT. So if you’re a 90s bby like me, you probably messed with Toy State products as a kid, just like this girl.

2. Radio Flyer Classic Red Wagon

Man, SM does not mess around. Iconic toy company Radio Flyer was founded in 1917 by rags2riche$ Italian immigrant Antonio Pasin and stayed strong even through the Great Depression manufacturing wood & steel wagons (“for every boy. for every girl”) that became world-famous after his 1933 showcase at the World Fair in Chicago. Today, Radio Flyer’s $99 Classic Red Wagon can be found enriching the childhoods of happy rich White children on its heritage-emphasizing website. Toy-wise, no brand screams rich and middle-class White traditional American childhood quite like Radio Flyer.

3. Radio Flyer Classic Rocking Horse

The rocking horse next to the wagon is equally soaked in the classic Americana vibe that keeps Land’s End in business. The shot of Radio Flyer’s vintage wooden horse in the girl’s fenced backyard establishes her as a privileged or “normal” child of middle-class White America. Even if you don’t recognize the brand, you might still associate wooden rocking horses with some era that Donald Trump’s supporters believe spotlighted an America that was even more overtly racist Great.

Interestingly, this $89-199.99 horse is hard to buy online. Can you find it on Radio Flyer’s web catalog? Bc I can’t seem to.

4. Target 14″ Economy Push Reel Mower

The $84.99 two-wheel lawnmower behind our boy Jaehyun is one of the cheapest and simplest-looking models sold today. The presence of this prop in the MV indicates that the girl’s family maintains their lawn to a respectable middle-class homeowner standard. It’s also a simple, slim design that doesn’t compete for attention against more important parts of the MV…plus it keeps SM’s production budget low and sweet.

Target’s been around since 1902, but only operated stores under the name “Target” since 1962. The brand isn’t out of place as a prop in this partially retro MV.

It also looks like the lawnmower’s been colorized by the MV editors as well.

5. Kaplan Toys World Landmarks Sand Molds

Kaplan Toys is a more modest company founded in 1951 that produces toys geared towards education for kids birth to 12 yrs. The sandcastle mold set in the MV has a mini Great Pyramid of ancient Egypt, the intact version of the Colosseum amphitheater of Rome, the Kukulkan Pyramid of the Mayan Empire, and, in blue, the Taj Mahal. I’m guessing SM bought the set for $15.95 and spray-painted the Taj Mahal mold pink from its original blue. In a later scene, you can see that the blurred blue mold above is the Mayan Pyramid one.

6. Kids Army Water Soaker Assault Rifle

It’s pretty clear that SM’s design team modified 7 of these $13.45 apiece water guns from Kids Army. The yellow plastic of the (tampon-looking) water storage compartment has been spray-painted either black or a deep blue to fit the color scheme of the MV.

Now, Kids Army isn’t some pedigreed century-old toymaker with a Wikipedia page and a long-ass ride About Us page like Toy State and Radio Flyer are. But look, if your toys are the key point of an iconic NCT scene (the sandbox spraying) and their bougie vintage products are just background decor, then who’s the real winner, u kno??

I’d also like to note that among the hundreds of water gun models I browsed through, this Kids Army water rifle is probs the only one that wouldn’t look absolutely lame in this key scene.

7. Three-joint desk magnifying lamp & DNA desk model

I couldn’t track down an exact model for either prop! But a magnifying lamp for desktop with three joints and a broad rectangular base costs between $45-$80 or more on Amazon. (Also, it looks surreally modern in this retro MV.) Similarly, DNA models with 2 “twists” seem to go for $12-15 on Chinese online retailer giant Alibaba. I wouldn’t be surprised if SM changed the colors on the DNA model too.

There’s some other classroom props I won’t go into: a life-size-plus skeleton that Jaehyun gropes cheekily, a boxy basic binocular microscope, a globe sitting on top of a tall cabinet, an almost 99% certain colorized map of just North and South America, and some books, etc.

I’m thinking they borrowed at least some of these: even a student microscope like the MV’s costs almost $150, which is a bit ridiculous for a background prop where the brand isn’t important. It makes sense to shell out $100 for each unmistakably logo-stamped Radio Flyer toy - it’s like the Supreme brand of large American middle class White kid toys. But for objects of interchangeable (aka not visible) brand like a skeleton that can cost from $47 to $195 on Amazon, it’s smart budgeting to just have the staff members borrow a prop from their local high school - and return it after filming.





8. Rubbermaid WaveBrake 35 Qt. Plastic Mop Bucket with Wringer (w/ Vinyl Cart Bag)

This yellow janitorial bucket set by Rubbermaid, which was founded in 1920, looks like it was purchased for $65 and knocked over for the club scene. There’s not many props in this scene, since the biggest focus is on people’s skin, hair, and eyes under Firetruck’s distinct neon-teal-blue lighting. Later, we see the 24-gallon vinyl cart bag for $50, also Rubbermaid, behind Yuta.





9. Macintosh Classic ii

Now the girl’s in the workplace. The Macintosh Classic ii was released in 1991 by ~vintage~ Apple at a price of $1899 (over $3K nowadays, if we adjust for inflation!) and only sold until 1993. It uses the same processing chip as its predecessor model the SE/30, but was slower! The Classic ii was the last of the 9-inch B&W Compact Mac series, and the last model with that external floppy disk drive shown above. It’s so dated that eBay listings call them “vintage” and Apple discontinued support for the Classic ii in 2001.

As a prop, I think it gives the Firetruck MV the retro-futuristic vibe that NCTmentary episodes aim for. The Dream Lab’s dated equipment combined with the sleek, modern video editing, grainy VHS camcorder footage, and futuristic close-ups create an overall surreal sense of dreamlike displacement. Where the heck in time are we? Is this the 1933 World Fair: Century of Progress and we’re dreaming about a tech-utopian future or are we living in 2018 dreaming about the 1900s, like Mad Men viewers immersed in a glamorized 60s corporate American workplace?

Bonus: either an intentional reference to Mad Men ~aesthetics~ OR an unintentional parallel between Mad Men’s and Firetruck’s uses of the “older male boss bullies younger female employee in retro corporate America” trope: either way, viewers will go, “ohh, in those days, women faced even more overt bullying from their male bosses in the corporate American workplace.”



The camera focus, zooming/panning, resolution, the lighting, etc, and the coloring/editing in the whole MV are all flamboyantly modern, but the props (and outfits) are surreally retro in contrast. (I can say something similar for BTS’s Hwayangyeonhwa era look if anyone’s interested!) Does this mix-and-match of time periods also give you a sense of dreamlike (more on this later) deja vu? NCT’s been doing this for a while in their MVs/NCTmentaries now…but that’s a different post.

Nowadays, the Mac Classic ii can be found cheaply on eBay for only $30-40 at most - if broken. So the production team only needed to shell out $100-200 at most for the 4 or so visible shells that appeared in the office set at one time. The hardest part would be finding enough online!

10. Flahavans Quick Oats Golden Syrup Sachets 10x40g & Harvey Fresh Long Life Full Cream milk 1 Liter & Smucker’s Sweet Orange Marmalade & Organic Valley Cream Cheese 8 oz tub

Now the girl is grown up. She’s a mother within a traditional ol’ White suburban middle class nuclear American family that patriotically consumes American breakfast brands like…Smuckers, which owns Jif peanut butter, Pillsbury frosting, Folgers coffee, Crisco oil, and even Dunkin’ Donuts, guys. This shot, like the classic-toy-populated sandbox scene, conspicuously showcases brands. It evokes the “patriotic consumer” society of post-WWII America where advertisers spent $12 billion per year as of 1960 targeting Americans (who purchased 250,000 ad-ready TVs per month by 1949 and increased private debt by $150 billion due to borrowing for consumption), popularizing and normalizing the ideal of the American Dream…with help from demographic targeting, marketers’ promotion of competitive materialism, idealized images of happy White nuclear families, plus often sexist and racist ads.

This is also when product placement in pop culture and TV shows got big.

[^image credit to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2014.]

Now, the brands. Flahavans is a family-owned Irish milling company founded in about 1785. Despite the MV’s strong visual allusions to the 1950s American advertisement look (the “vintage” or “retro” ads), our Quick Oats maker is based in the town of Kilmacthomas in County Waterford, Ireland. Note that the prop in the MV seems to have been recolored, with the originally red “Quick Oats” lettering changed to white, and the beige background saturated to orange.

And Harvey Fresh milk isn’t American, either - the company was established in 1986 in a farming community outside Perth in Western Australia. They make fruit and vegetable juices, lactose-free milk, and yoghurts too lol. The prop doesn’t look like it’s been recolored from the original 1 liter carton! Its carton design looks like vintage advertising, which I’m guessing was the look SM wanted.

Interestingly, Organic Valley was founded in 1988 and is an independent collective of farmers producing organic dairy products - they’re based in Wisconsin, in the US, but also have farmer-owner members across Canada, the UK, and Australia.

Finally, Smucker’s was founded in 1897 and sells butters, spreads, toppings, and more under the folksy slogan “with a name like Smucker’s it has to be good.” In the year ending on April 30, 2017, Smucker’s reported a $2.8 million gross profit out of $7.4 million revenue, and paid $286,100 in income tax. In the MV, there’s an opened jam jar and a closed jar of (2-star lmao) orange jelly.

11. Toy firetruck based on Bruder Toys’ MAN Fire Engine

Like his mom, the boy loves toy trucks. But this isn’t a CAT yellow dump truck by Toy State - this is a modified version of a, uh, remix/cover of German toymaker Bruder’s signature mini firetruck.

Bruder was founded in 1926 in Germany, where the company is still based, and is famous in Europe for its toys that scale to their “real” counterparts at 1:16 ratios. The toy firetruck referenced by the version in the MV has lights & sounds, the realistic four stabilizing legs that deploy when the ladder is extended, a ladder that literally stretches to 3 feet of height when extended, and…holy crap, even a water hose that squirts water when pumped. For the MV, though, you can see a version of the MAN firetruck on Alibaba that has some Hanja or Chinese characters on the side and front - I assume SM modified those out, as well as painted the originally gray ladder teal blue.

12. Samduk 1000 mL laboratory beaker

This prop isn’t even important to the “retro Americana” look of the MV, but I just wanted to share a hilarious forum thread on Sciencemadness.org back from 2009, seven years before Firetruck was released. The Samduk beaker is shown holding a bubbling clear solution that catches flame, showing us that the girl was in danger during her school science class.

Did SM see the 2009 commenters’ doubts that Samduk glassware would be safe in cases of violently boiling contents and then use it in the MV as a safety hazard full of burning liquid?! Because if so…I mean, there’s no real testing results available for Samduk beakers, so the commenters could just be voicing the unconsciously anti-China worldview that all its goods are cheap and low-quality. But SM production staff selecting Amduk as their “dangerous beaker” brand based on years-old thoughts from online threads is a hilarious image.

13. Bonus: what makes a prop too trivial to identify?

this two-tiered porcelain lampshade with flared, scalloped rim?

or the 5-gallon water bottle and dispenser? and soooo on and on. All of these are trivial in that these props’ brand names and specificity of model aren’t uniquely important to the props’ ability to serve as visual symbols (of a time period, of a socioeconomic class, of a societal phenomenon like postwar American consumerism and its inseparability from the USA’s understanding of the American Dream, etc.) in the MV…but identifying them is still an insightful exercise into the prop selection process of SM’s production design team.