At a recent Monster Jam event at the Prudential Center in Newark, as monster trucks with shark fins, ears and zombies rolled around a doughy, cinnamon-brown court floor, I remembered the first catchphrase I ever had. he said, “Pass big truck.” Gauzes of small children waved around the stands, their mouths open and their ears covered by muffs or a parent’s palms.
Big trucks were passing, loud.
They also went up in the air. It crashed back into earth recently excavated from a storage facility near MetLife Stadium. They bounced back up — that is, if they were lucky enough to land on their 66-inch tires and not their roofs.
But before they did any of that, they stood still, posing around the venue like sleeping beasts for a popular appetizer event called the Pit Party, which, for about $40 a head, gave attendees access to the stadium floor for an hour and a half that morning. There, fans lined up to meet drivers like Weston Anderson, the 21-year-old who operates the 37th edition of the Grave Digger, the tour’s most famous truck.
Tall, blond and scruffy, Mr. Anderson comes from a dynasty of monster trucks from Kill Devil Hills, N.C. His father, Dennis Anderson, built the original Grave Digger in 1982, and two of his brothers drive different iterations of the dirty, purple -and-green behemoth in other Monster Jam tours, while another competes in a spinoff truck.
“It’s like driving on a marshmallow,” Mr. Anderson said of the Prudential Center’s filth. “Some trucks will go up, flip over. Some won’t.”
Monster Jam has grown significantly—monstrously—since its inception in 1992, a decade before Mr. Anderson was born. It now runs six series, five based in the United States and one overseas, and sells, on its own, millions of tickets each year between indoor extravaganzas and bigger arena explosions.
Monster Jam, it seems, has become trendy with Gen Z-ers and millennials. “There were a lot of 20-year-olds going with their friends, kind of ironic,” Eli Hauser, a 23-year-old artist, said of a Monster Jam event in San Francisco last month. Mr. Hauser posted that irony had turned into genuine excitement. Still, the vast majority of the Prudential Center audience on the evening of Jan. 27 consisted of Gen X-ers and older millennial parents with their kids in tow, though a few younger fans were scattered in the crowd, reminiscing about growing up watching monster trucks.
Self-proclaimed super fan Mark Galloway, 26, strolled into the Pit Party with a custom-made championship belt on his shoulder and took photos with Jamie Sullivan, who drives a truck called the Monster Mutt Dalmatian. Mr Galloway, who attended his first Monster Jam in 2003, said he had twice driven monster trucks at a boot camp. “Even though it was scary and surreal, I could feel it,” she said.
Collin Groom, a high school student from Upper Pittsgrove, NJ, said he took his first Monster Jam at age 2 and never looked back. “You can’t sleep at an event like this,” added Mr. Gampros, now 16 and wearing a baseball cap covered in drivers’ autographs.
Around the pit, kids played with monster trucks in sandboxes. Adults bought beer and merchandise. (A collectible Grave Digger mug filled with syrup-filled shaved ice cost $15.) Smells of wet earth and popcorn mingle with ambient exhaust and soap, apparently coming from freshly washed trucks.
The Pit Party was over by noon, the spectators had found their seats, and by 1:00 p.m., the 12,000 pound monsters were roaring live. Grave Digger and his seven competitors — Zombie, Dalmatian, Megalodon and El Toro Loco, among others — took a lap around the track, parked and prepared for a series of short one-on-one matches.
Newbies might assume that cars are still regularly crushed under the wheels at these events, which mostly involve aerial acrobatics and tricks. Winners — determined by watching fans who rate the non-game performances on a scale of 1 to 10 using their phones — win only bragging rights, no money. And so it makes sense that Monster Jam is a first-run business. Two drivers hitting 1,500 horsepower each for 30 seconds sounds like 10 cars slamming into your eardrum. They are shockingly, ecstatically powerful. That’s the point.
Mr. Anderson shot Grave Digger for the ultimate victory in the race match, earning eight points. He climbed on top of his truck for a touchdown-style, chest-pounding celebration.
Next was the two wheeler competition. The trucks had two chances to kick up the dirt in the center of the pit and land on their front or rear tires. The announcer walked everyone through the finer points of reels, poppers and other gimmicks as the crowd pulled out their phones to make their guesses. Mr Anderson secured another top spot after he parked his truck on its nose and reversed into a wheelie.
By 1:45 p.m., the Prudential Center smelled like an exhaust pipe. Cindy Castillo, who brought her daughter, Jaylene, and son, Izaiah, whose seventh birthday was being celebrated, said her family had gotten used to the smell after about four years of rallying.
“When we first came, my eyes burned from the smoke coming up,” he said. “But now we’re immune to it.”
While many parents made the trip to Newark at the behest of their children, some came on their own initiative. Champagne Pedro, a sneaker lover who owns an ice cream business, traveled from Middletown, New York, because he wanted to “feel like a kid again” on his 52nd birthday. “Who doesn’t love monster trucks?” asked.
Wearing a fur coat and oversized glasses, Mr Pedro, who was accompanied by his two children and a colleague, noted his delight that three of the drivers were women. “Nothing is impossible,” he said.
During halftime and other down times, driver interviews were broadcast on the Jumbotron. A dance camera scanned the crowd. Drivers played games like rock-paper-scissors with warblers, who won a toy for their efforts. When the half was over, the motocross bikers went up a thin ramp and did acrobatics in the air. Then the trucks came back, though not all of them lasted long.
Monster trucks rip doors, hoods — El Toro Loco’s hood was crumpled and ripped in the middle of the competition. “Everything but the chassis will be replaced more than likely once, if not 100 times,” Mr Anderson said.
Sometimes trucks just fail. A Caterpillar vehicle swept Zombie, now more dead than undead, off course in the second half. Grave Digger risked a similar fate when Mr. Anderson flipped the vehicle onto its roof during the ‘Sky Wheelie’ ride. (It wouldn’t be the first time a truck had died on Mr. Anderson — it hit Grave Digger No. 33 in his first year driving it.)
Would Grave Digger return for the freestyle match? “We’re not sure if Weston’s coming back,” the announcer said at one point, prompting a lone boom from the stands. The favorite to win may lose.
The event lasted 12 minutes after the unofficial break. Monster Jam schedules its indoor events to last two hours, about as long as parents can reasonably hope their kids will sit still. Wrecks slow things down.
Then came the word. Grave Digger’s theme song, “Bad to the Bone,” began to play. Mr. Anderson rushed his truck into the center of the pits and immediately scored the highest score of the round, securing his supremacy for another day.
Or at least for a few hours. The central dirt hill would have to be quickly rebuilt and the track dirt treated. Another contest was scheduled to begin at 7 p.m