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Scalextric!

Started by Flatulent Fox, April 10, 2019, 04:47:54 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Which ones have the bits that grow downwards into the rails

Scalextites
2 (50%)
Scalexmites
2 (50%)

Total Members Voted: 4

Flatulent Fox

I was just reading this wonderful post...
Quote from: Flatulent Fox on April 10, 2019, 04:14:01 PM
Start making a new scalextric track while you wait,and put in a chicane.
..and it got me thinking about Scalextric.What a lovely thought.

Has anyone still got their scalextric sets?
If not, which one did you have?

Their website has some great classic head to head lineups like this:
Last bag of weed* for sale! which drippy hippy can make it first without their VW breaking down?



*Marijuana sold separately

Dex Sawash

Why isn't it Scalectrix?

Norton Canes

Because it's powered by elextricity, silly

Scalextric! Scalextric! Scalextric the winner!


Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

I had the non-union Mexican equivalent.



It was actually really good (when I was little). The cars had magnets in, so they could do loop-the-loops and drive vertically. The neighbours had the same brand, so we'd combine them to make one mega track.

My local branch of Beatties had a big Scalextric set upstairs, with all scenery and little figures spectating and such.

salr

My parents let me set up a 'big' layout in the loft above the house. A figure of eight folded in on itself, 8 left-handers. gosh that was fun. My dad even gave me a space heater to make it less cold up there. I'm sure they weren't just trying to get rid of me or anything =D. My favorite cars were a williams FW11 and some kind of tyrrell that looked really sleak.

Replies From View

Very crap; kept on whizzing off the track and also the track was much shorter in real life.

After Mouse Trap the very definition of disappointment.

seepage

I just had the Matchbox raceway thing. You stuck pegs to the bottom of ordinary Matchbox cars, which slotted onto a metal coil beneath the track, which was driven by gears in a club housing thingy. Alarmingly, the plastic bag the coil came in had 'beware: radiation' stickers on. I'm sure it was only alpha, but still.

Mr Banlon


Twed

The brush contacts and wonderful smell and sparking etc. were a really food fundamental lesson in electronics.

No modern toys are as fun as Scalextric. There's just not enough hands-on stuff. Minecraft with its infinite possibilities is worse than the immediate limits of a Scalextric set. Sometimes.

Sebastian Cobb

I had the RS Cosworth set with working headlights and brakelights that lit up only when the power was cut (rather than later cars that just lit up the taillights).



I also had one of these:



Handling was crap though.

I got a massive bollocking off my dad for covering the bends and the starting line with Vaseline so I could do burnouts and powerslides. Something about it not being good for the carpet. 28 I was, etc.

Twed

Ah, that's the set I had. I didn't have the extra Beto O Rourke figure though.

Neomod

Christ, that brings back memories. Tea round a friends house would inevitably include Scallextric or Subbuteo sessions post cheese and ham toastie.

*spangles*

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: Neomod on April 10, 2019, 07:55:28 PM
Christ, that brings back memories. Tea round a friends house would inevitably include Scallextric or Subbuteo sessions post cheese and ham toastie.

*spangles*

Alright, Nigel Blackwell.

Replies From View

There was a scalextric club in a smoky hall run by paedophiles in the 90s.

It wasn't good.

Endicott

In the 70s the Rally Cross set had two Minis. I think my brother also had a Ford Escort and I had a Datsun 260Z.


Twed

Quote from: Replies From View on April 10, 2019, 08:06:55 PM
There was a scalextric club in a smoky hall run by paedophiles in the 90s.

It wasn't good.
That's hardly their fault. You should have had sexier arses.

idunnosomename

Quote from: Replies From View on April 10, 2019, 07:02:53 PM
Very crap; kept on whizzing off the track
thats the point. you have to ease off the trigger so that doesnt happen

Replies From View

Quote from: idunnosomename on April 10, 2019, 08:22:41 PM
thats the point. you have to ease off the trigger so that doesnt happen

Why not just make a trigger that can't be pushed in so far.

It's like having a door that slams too easily and wakes everyone in the house up.  Stop having that door then.

idunnosomename

well you can go faster on the straight bits but not on the bends. i guess. i wasn't allowed to set it up very often.

Twed

Quote from: Replies From View on April 10, 2019, 08:27:55 PM
Why not just make a trigger that can't be pushed in so far.

It's like having a door that slams too easily and wakes everyone in the house up.  Stop having that door then.
Let's change all the computer games so you can't die in them too.

Cuntbeaks

It was all about the Race and Chase.



Never actually had one, although i did have TCR. The jam car edition if i remember correctly. Worked for a week. It was a dodgy transformer.

buzby

#23
Quote from: Dex Sawash on April 10, 2019, 05:08:20 PM
Why isn't it Scalectrix?
It's called Scalextric becuase the original system used clockwork cars and was called Scalex (made by a comoany called Minimodels). It was redesigned to use electric motors supplied through rails on the track (like model trains) in 1957 and branded as 'Scalex-Electric', which was soon shortened to Scalextric.

I have 2 sets - a 90s 'Super Saloons' touring car set with Andy Rouse's works Ford Mondeo and Matt Neal's Team Dynamics 100+ privateer BMW 318i:

and a SCX 'Spanish Scalextric'* RAC Rally set with a Ford Focus WRC and Seat Cordoba WRC, and an electronic start gantry

I also have about 50 cars, mostly Ford models, dating from the 70s through to the current day. I also have a few accessories, including extra kerbs and barriers, some buildings and a vintage 'Autostart' Control Tower (it has a clockwork timer in it so that when the button on the top is pressed the red light changes to green after a random time period:


The 'flying off at corners' problem has been progressively tamed since the late 80s onwards by copying Aurora and TCR by fitting powerful magnets onto the bottom of the car chassis to hold them onto the steel power rails (branded as MagnaTraction by Hornby) They also developed four wheel drive systems, from a rubber drive belt that ran from the rear axle to the front:

or a motor with a long shaft that drives from both ends and 2 pinions to drive the crown gears on both the front and rear axles.

In combination with the MagnaTraction this was so effective that you could basically hold full throttle all the way round some tracks (my SCX Audi 90 Quattro IMSA car can do this, much like the real car wich dominated the US IMSA championship in the late 80s))

This was obviously considered boring and removed the challenge, so more recently 4WD has fallen out of favour, even on rally cars. For race meetings there are also classes where magnets are banned (such as races for models of 60s and 70s F1 cars)

*Lines Bros/Triang bought Minimodels in 1958. Lines Bros.opened factories in France and Spain to make Scalextric cars and sets locally. In Spain they partnered with a company called EXIN, who gradually started making their own cars (which in most cases were better than UK-made ones) which were then imported by Triang for sale in the UK market. Lines Bros./Triang went bust in 1972 and their UK Scalextric operation was bought by Dunbee-Combex-Marx and moved to Margate. Their overseas operations carried on making Scalextric independently, and supplying cars to Scalextric UK. In Spain, EXIN had the rights to use the Scalextric name,.

In the early 90s, EXIN started importing their cars in the UK under the 'SCX' name in direct competition to the same cars they were supplying to Scalextric (but a bit cheaper by cutting out the middleman). Margate got pissed off with this and in 1992 stopped selling rebranded EXIN cars and teamed up with another Spanish company to sell UK-made Scalextric in Spain as SuperSlot (Spain is still a massive market for slot cars). EXIN were taken over by Tyco (who already owned Matchbox) in 1994, moved the manufacturing to China and started marketing their cars in the UK as 'Matchbox SCX'. Mattel took over Tyco in 1996 and in 1998 sold the SCX business to a Barcelona based company called Technitoys.

In the 2000s Scalextric (now owned by Hornby) redesigned the joint system on their track so it was no longer compatible with the original design that was still being used by SCX. They also both developed incompatible 'Digital' control systems (which allow more than 2 cars on track, and overtaking via sections of track with solenoid-operated points in the slots).



madhair60

genuinely embarrassing

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth


madhair60

That's right, dig up old stuff. Pathetic

Dr Syntax Head

Scalextric is cool if you're a little kid but oo gauge railway layouts are for man men

hummingofevil

Quote from: buzby on April 10, 2019, 10:44:19 PM
It's called Scalextric becuase the original system used clockwork cars and was called Scalex (made by a comoany called Minimodels). It was redesigned to use electric motors supplied through rails on the track (like model trains) in 1957 and branded as 'Scalex-Electric', which was soon shortened to Scalextric.

I have 2 sets - a 90s 'Super Saloons' touring car set with Andy Rouse's works Ford Mondeo and Matt Neal's Team Dynamics 100+ privateer BMW 318i:

and a SCX 'Spanish Scalextric'* RAC Rally set with a Ford Focus WRC and Seat Cordoba WRC, and an electronic start gantry

I also have about 50 cars, mostly Ford models, dating from the 70s through to the current day. I also have a few accessories, including extra kerbs and barriers, some buildings and a vintage 'Autostart' Control Tower (it has a clockwork timer in it so that when the button on the top is pressed the red light changes to green after a random time period:


The 'flying off at corners' problem has been progressively tamed since the late 80s onwards by copying Aurora and TCR by fitting powerful magnets onto the bottom of the car chassis to hold them onto the steel power rails (branded as MagnaTraction by Hornby) They also developed four wheel drive systems, from a rubber drive belt that ran from the rear axle to the front:

or a motor with a long shaft that drives from both ends and 2 pinions to drive the crown gears on both the front and rear axles.

In combination with the MagnaTraction this was so effective that you could basically hold full throttle all the way round some tracks (my SCX Audi 90 Quattro IMSA car can do this, much like the real car wich dominated the US IMSA championship in the late 80s))

This was obviously considered boring and removed the challenge, so more recently 4WD has fallen out of favour, even on rally cars. For race meetings there are also classes where magnets are banned (such as races for models of 60s and 70s F1 cars)

*Lines Bros/Triang bought Minimodels in 1958. Lines Bros.opened factories in France and Spain to make Scalextric cars and sets locally. In Spain they partnered with a company called EXIN, who gradually started making their own cars (which in most cases were better than UK-made ones) which were then imported by Triang for sale in the UK market. Lines Bros./Triang went bust in 1972 and their UK Scalextric operation was bought by Dunbee-Combex-Marx and moved to Margate. Their overseas operations carried on making Scalextric independently, and supplying cars to Scalextric UK. In Spain, EXIN had the rights to use the Scalextric name,.

In the early 90s, EXIN started importing their cars in the UK under the 'SCX' name in direct competition to the same cars they were supplying to Scalextric (but a bit cheaper by cutting out the middleman). Margate got pissed off with this and in 1992 stopped selling rebranded EXIN cars and teamed up with another Spanish company to sell UK-made Scalextric in Spain as SuperSlot (Spain is still a massive market for slot cars). EXIN were taken over by Tyco (who already owned Matchbox) in 1994, moved the manufacturing to China and started marketing their cars in the UK as 'Matchbox SCX'. Mattel took over Tyco in 1996 and in 1998 sold the SCX business to a Barcelona based company called Technitoys.

In the 2000s Scalextric (now owned by Hornby) redesigned the joint system on their track so it was no longer compatible with the original design that was still being used by SCX. They also both developed incompatible 'Digital' control systems (which allow more than 2 cars on track, and overtaking via sections of track with solenoid-operated points in the slots).
?Buzby. Have you written a book? You could collect your posts from here into an anthology and it would be a best seller for Christmas gift book market. You could make millions; every dad in the country would be bought one.

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

Quote from: madhair60 on April 10, 2019, 11:48:19 PM
That's right, dig up old stuff. Pathetic
That's no way to talk about your mum.