In the video for Bob and Barbara's anniversary, Chris mentions that Bob likes trains. Upon hearing this, I wonder why Bob didn't try to bond with Chris by building a model railroad based on Cwcville or Station Square . It could've been something they both could've bonded over as well as serving as a way for Bob to show Chris how to put his C.A.D.D. degree to work and failing that it would've allowed Chris to make easy money Virginia is one of the states that allows modelers to collect funds for their layouts at conventions, which would mean Chris could make easy money by just sitting on his butt while the trains ran around the layout. Also they could make even more money if the layout were to be featured in one of the magazines, which could further work in Chris's favor in getting money/career opportunities
Bob was into trains? Neat.
I'm honestly surprised Chris was never into trains, considering it is a very common obsessive interest among autistic children.
I can see why Chris never got into Thomas The Tank Engine specifically, because while that franchise was popular in Britain since the 1950's, it didn't really take off in America until the debut of Shining Time Station in the early 1990's.
By the time that show was on the air, Chris would've been approaching middle school age and was probably already into Sonic The Hedgehog, one of his more prominent obsessions.
But to not be interested in trains at all is still somewhat unusual.
Chris's various obsessions and interests have always been sort of interesting to me. He was a huge MLP fan even before bronies were a thing, and with BronyCon ending and the whole brony fad of the early 2010's being a dying fandom overall, Chris may have the dubious honor of being both the first and last brony.
I also find it sort of interesting that Chris has always been sort of ambivalent and indifferent about Digimon, even though he is a huge fan of Pokemon and has been since the franchise arrived in America, which means he would've been around for the Pokemon/Digimon fan rivalry back in the late 1990's and early 2000's. You'd think a hardcore Pokemon autist like him would be treating Digimon the same way he treats the dreaded Hex Box, and yet he's never really taken a stance one way or the other.
As someone who was a kid back then and was a huge Digimon fan at the time, I remember that there was a huge rivalry between Digimon and Pokemon fans, especially among the target demographic of children.
At my school back then, you couldn't admit to liking both. You had to pick a side. I went with Digimon. Kids are kind of weird like that.
Now, I am over a decade younger than Chris and was in First Grade when he was in his senior year, so while it makes sense he would not have been involved in any schoolyard arguments over which was better, this is still Chris we are talking about. Chris is notoriously brand loyal and generally detests competing franchises (again, the whole Hex Box debacle)
Then again, he's also been rather indifferent about Mario, who was the rival franchise to Sonic the Hedgehog back in the early 90's.
However, I can kind of see Chris not really hating on Mario since he likes a lot of other Nintendo franchises like Pokemon and in all honesty, nowadays you're more likely to see Sonic games on Nintendo consoles and the two franchises have had official crossovers as well. The same has not happened with Digimon and Pokemon, even after their fan rivalry had largely died off.
Also, I am wondering if Chris liked Sailor Moon before he met Megan Schroeder and if so, how much of a fan was he? I know he got super big into Sailor Moon for a brief while and got the legendary poster of fail around that time, but given the time he was in high school, I could easily see him being at least a casual fan of the show when it was actually airing on TV back in the late 1990's and very early 2000's, sort of like how he is with the Ninja Turtles.
When Chris met Megan, it was around 2005 or 2006 and Sailor Moon had been off the air for a few years and the fandom in America was pretty much dead (it didn't really get big again until around 2012-2013 with the combination of Viz re-licensing the franchise and the general 90's nostalgia movement) but I'm wondering if Chris followed the series when Sailor Moon was actually on TV (1995-2002) as he always liked girly and cute things even back then.
