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March 28, 2024, 06:46:40 PM

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Scalextric!

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

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Which ones have the bits that grow downwards into the rails

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

Total Members Voted: 4

gib

Quote from: buzby on April 12, 2019, 08:15:01 PM
Ah, that sounds more like the Pacemaker Hand Booster then:


Oh you beauty, you. I had that exact set and had forgotten about the blue bends.

Brian Freeze



Theres a little unit round the corner from here that does Scalextric racing The Uk's largest indoor Scalextric setup is just round the corner from us. Apparently. Might have to see about having a nosy at it.

I inherited my dad and his brothers layout and passed it onto a cousin and it got trashed after i had it. I wish id not given it away. Lots of 60's cars and plenty of track.

Keep up the good work Buzby!

Blumf

Quote from: buzby on April 12, 2019, 08:15:01 PM
TCR in Ideal's case, and Matchbox's Powertrack system  sold from 1977 until they went bust 1982, the most famous of which was the iconic Race & Chase set:

This had the unique ability to put the cars into reverse at the press of a button so they could do a J-turn at the next corner and drive off in he opposite direction (TV ad showing it in action here, voiced by Kid Jensen)

That's the one I had. Liked the J-turn stuff.

Captain Z

Quote from: gib on April 12, 2019, 06:06:57 PM
No, mine was a long red 'tunnel', say 40cm x 10cm x 10cm with a lever on top for priming the elastic.

I also remember this from the set I inherited from my dad, but I don't remember it looking like the picture buzby posted. Definitely a red tunnel but with a large white angled lever ontop. He also had the battery powered booster but my grandparents (whose house I would play with this at) rarely had the correct sized batteries in stock.

Also inherited a load of Scalextric bits and bobs. The best of my dad's old cars was the Ford Capri:



And then I got a few modern cars as presents over the years:



I never knew which specific sets/layouts made up the collection but I remember there were enough banked curves to make a two or three-storey spiral section.

a duncandisorderly

so... scorpions, anyone? matchbox made them, IIRC, & they were normal matchbox size, but with rechargeable power packs & motors in them. ran on the same yellow (or streak-liveried) track, but there was a charging station disguised as a start/finish line.

kid next door had a set. I had the double-downhill loop-the-loop set mentioned earlier & had added curves & stuff so I could use it on the level; I got hold of the (black & orange) hot wheels catapult tunnel thing & somehow made the lesney track work with it. but the little shit next door had this:




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9rGs1sdibg

Neomod

Quote from: Replies From View on April 12, 2019, 07:57:41 PM
I wonder if there was a miniature version of it made later.  In the early 90s I had something similar that was fully encased with a small car inside.  You'd operate a tiny steering wheel to make the car go around and around the track.

I can't remember enough important keywords to search the web for it.  I guess it's unlikely to be Matchbox as it didn't use their cars.  May have been Tomy or someone similar?

Not the 'Rally' Pocketeer?



That's a whole other thread.

buzby

Quote from: Captain Z on April 12, 2019, 11:17:01 PM
I also remember this from the set I inherited from my dad, but I don't remember it looking like the picture buzby posted. Definitely a red tunnel but with a large white angled lever ontop. He also had the battery powered booster but my grandparents (whose house I would play with this at) rarely had the correct sized batteries in stock.
Matchbox did change the colourscheme of the Pacemaker Booster to red and white in 1975:

They never made any other types of booster for the Superfast tracks other than the three i have posted about. The only thing with an angled handle on the top was the short-lived Rev & Roar from the eraly seventies, but that was never used with the track system:

I think what you might be describing is the Hot Wheels Rod Runner booster for thier own track system (vdeo of it in action here):


Quote from: a duncandisorderly on April 12, 2019, 11:28:44 PM
so... scorpions, anyone? matchbox made them, IIRC, & they were normal matchbox size, but with rechargeable power packs & motors in them. ran on the same yellow (or streak-liveried) track, but there was a charging station disguised as a start/finish line.

kid next door had a set. I had the double-downhill loop-the-loop set mentioned earlier & had added curves & stuff so I could use it on the level; I got hold of the (black & orange) hot wheels catapult tunnel thing & somehow made the lesney track work with it. but the little shit next door had this:


Scorpions are very rare - they were quite expensive at the time so weren't a great seller over here (I think they did better in export markets though), and as the bloke in the video pointed out ,they were quite troublesome to keep running and consequently had a high returns rate. They were only listed in the catalogues from 1971 to 73 before they were dropped. I had one of the cars when I was a kid (found in one of the boxes of track my uncle brought home from his bin rounds) but the battery had leaked and corroded the contacts inside, and as nobody knew what to do with it it was thrown away.

Sherringford Hovis

The Scalextric Mini-Stox could pull a U-turn on the corners, and the set came with additional clip-on blank pieces for the outside edges. One corner was a long 180-degree chicane to allow the Minis to smash into each other in a very satisfactory fashion. A suitcase-full of old track from a jumble sale was a very welcome addition, but aside from the occasional race with a pair of TR7s, my pudgy-kneed brother and I eschewed any lap-counting racing in favour of DESTRUCTION DERBY.

imitationleather

Quote from: Blumf on April 12, 2019, 04:59:47 PM
Somebody modded one to play Outrun



I had this and my God I do not remember it being that small.

JesusAndYourBush

Quote from: gilbertharding on April 12, 2019, 04:54:51 PM
Anyone ever see this?



Another friend of mine had it... and it provided literally minutes of fun. Look how the other kid on the box art looks as if he's about to have a migraine.

A friend had one of those but the shitstain would never let me have a go.  I'd have to watch him play it for a minute before he got bored and we went and did something else.

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on April 12, 2019, 04:56:22 PM
That reminds me of this toy that my mate had:

Just an endless loop of driving through a wireframe road that's rear projected.

That looks quite cool, until...

Quote from: Blumf on April 12, 2019, 04:59:47 PM


HAHA LOL, it's so small.

imitationleather

I'm still highly skeptical that the one I had was that small. I know I was a kid at the time but c'mon man.

JesusAndYourBush

I had an Evel Knievel Turbo Tower Of Power.  You pumped a handle up and down (I recall it was constructed a little bit like the two cardboard tubes of a a balloon pump), somehow that buildup of air translated into speed for the little motorbike man (Buzby?) and after pumping the handle for a few seconds you pressed a button and the little motorbike shot off and smashed into the skirting board and your mum told you to be more careful.

A few years later my brother had a similar toy but his worked by turning a handle.  My mysteriously air-powered one was far cooler.

The Culture Bunker

Quote from: imitationleather on April 14, 2019, 04:52:14 PM
I'm still highly skeptical that the one I had was that small. I know I was a kid at the time but c'mon man.
I was a child with freakishly large hands and can confirm they were pretty small bits of kit. Noisy too.

Dex Sawash

Quote from: JesusAndYourBush on April 14, 2019, 04:55:41 PM
I had an Evel Knievel Turbo Tower Of Power.  You pumped a handle up and down (I recall it was constructed a little bit like the two cardboard tubes of a a balloon pump), somehow that buildup of air translated into speed for the little motorbike man (Buzby?) and after pumping the handle for a few seconds you pressed a button and the little motorbike shot off and smashed into the skirting board and your mum told you to be more careful.

A few years later my brother had a similar toy but his worked by turning a handle.  My mysteriously air-powered one was far cooler.

I had this one


Replies From View

Quote from: Dex Sawash on April 14, 2019, 05:05:16 PM
I had this one



So did my older brother, which meant it was around for me to play with when I was raiding his bedroom when he was out.  Brilliant toy.

They made a retro one a few years ago but it was of much flimsier plastic.

Dex Sawash

Quote from: Dex Sawash on April 14, 2019, 05:05:16 PM
I had this one



A few of thise sync'd up should be pleasant

I had the MG Metro Scalextric for Christmas. Somewhere I have a photo of me playing with it. I wanted the Leyland Team T45 truck but never got it. My dad found a massive box of track at a car boot sale and we built an enormous racing circuit that went all around the living room. Later, I had the Pole Position set for Christmas but this came with a couple of generic F1 style cars. By this time, I had a Ford Capri and some older cars that I had from a mate. One was the Tyrell 6 wheeler. I sold all my Scalextric to fund my purchase of a Game Boy when they had just came out and Tandy were selling them for around £80 back in 1992ish.

Blumf

Had a Dukes of Hazard (Cunning) Stunt Buster



Not the more featured Barn Buster, my parents evidently hated me.

Minutes of fun:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVMVGCpJ64M

buzby

Quote from: JesusAndYourBush on April 14, 2019, 04:55:41 PM
I had an Evel Knievel Turbo Tower Of Power.  You pumped a handle up and down (I recall it was constructed a little bit like the two cardboard tubes of a a balloon pump), somehow that buildup of air translated into speed for the little motorbike man (Buzby?) and after pumping the handle for a few seconds you pressed a button and the little motorbike shot off and smashed into the skirting board and your mum told you to be more careful.

A few years later my brother had a similar toy but his worked by turning a handle.  My mysteriously air-powered one was far cooler.

It wasn't Evel Knievel - Ideal had the Knievel toy licence. Turbo Tower Of Power was made by Kenner as a competitor to Ideal's Kneivel line, and came in multiple versions including other Kenner licences like Six Million Dollar Man and Spiderman:

There's a demonstration of it in action here and an explanation of how it worked (and how it differed from Ideal's geared friction drive system used on their Knievel toys) here. Basically it used air pressure from the pump to drive a windmill, which spum a geared flywheel in the toy. The faster you pumped, the faster the flywheel spun and the faster/further the you would go when released.

Kenner had another line of flywheel-powered toys which used a toothed ripcord to provide the initial power to the geared flywheel, called Super Sonic Power (SSP). Like most things Kenner they were marketed in the UK by Palitoy (Kenner and Palitoy were both owned by General Mills), and when General Mills closed down Palitoy in 1985 the dregs of their warehouse stock was sold off cheap to discounters, some of which were incomplete. I got some partial Micronauts sets (which Palitoy were seeling in the UK from Mego) from our local Pennywise shop, and somebody bought me a partially-complete SSP Smash Up Derby set (it only had one ramp, and some of the fly-off panels were missing) for Christmas that year:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jE6J3wWE2Pg
I also had a Dinky Toys Pink Panthermobile which used a copy of the SSP flywheel system:


The demise of Palitoy had a massive unforseen effect on Star Wars collectors decades later. Palitoy were the European packager of the General Mills/KennerStar Wars line (sold as Palitoy in the UK and General Mills in mainland Europe). The figures were sealed into the bubbles on region-specific cardbacks in Palitoy's factory. When the factory was closed, thousnds of boxed-up figures (and some unboxed ones) were sold off cheap to dealers. Amongst the stock sold off were boxes of printed cardbacks and unused bubbles.

These ended up in the hands of a toy dealer in Brighton called Antoni Emchowicz, who traded under the name ToyToni. Over the years he began working out ways to seal used, uncarded figures under the bubbles onto the unused cards which he could then sell at vast profit as 'Mint On Card' (MOC), initially with spraymount, then an electric iron and eventually having a heated metal press jig made similar to the one Palitoy had used. When his stock of original bubbles ran out he had some replicas made so he could continue his scheme.

This only came to light in 2013 when one of the old-school Star Wars collectors from the 80s was invited to post his memories of the era on one of the SW collectors forums He casually mentioned that back when Palitoy closed one of the dealers was offering boxes of unused cards and bubbles as well as the loose figures, and that the dealer had eventually gone into partnership with Toni to find a way to use them. Like most toy dealers, Joiner himself has a bit of a chequered history regarding provenance issues with items he had sold so it was first taken as BS or sour grapes on his part for losing out on the deal, but when he posted copies of the lists the dealer had given him of what the cards were, and this was tied into ToyToni's ebay sales history (buying loose figures under a number of accounts which then appeared as 'Mint On Card' figures, the ToyToni Palitoy MOC scandal broke and caused shockwaves across the Star Wars collecting community

Quote from: Dex Sawash on April 14, 2019, 05:05:16 PM
I had this one


I got  the Stunt Cycle and Scramble Van off my mum and dad iat Christmas 1977 (again, it came via my Littlewoods employee uncle). A couple of years later I really wanted a Lego Technics set (specifically the 851 Farm Tractor), so my Evel Knievel tpys had to be sold in the local paper's small ads to pay for it :(

Quote from: Blumf on April 14, 2019, 06:35:31 PM
Had a Dukes of Hazard (Cunning) Stunt Buster



Not the more featured Barn Buster, my parents evidently hated me.

Minutes of fun:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVMVGCpJ64M
My younger cousin got this for Christmas. It didn't last one day before the gears in the friction motor in the General Lee stripped.

dr beat

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

Oh bloody hell Beatties.  My visits to the St Johns Centre Liverpool branch were always a treat; didn't have a clue what to do with any of the stock I just liked looking at it; perhaps rather like Donald Trump and the US nuclear arsenal - well lets hope.

I'm bloody loving this thread, and I only had the rally Mini Metro set which was an oval track with banked curves which meant the cars went flying off at all sorts of angles.  I think the cars lasted until 27th December in whatever year of the 1980s it was. 

So Lynne, perhaps Alan had a point.

dr beat

Here's a question: which is, or was, the biggest ever branch of Beatties?

king_tubby

Oh so many thanks for the picture of the Pink Panther car. My granny had that in the box of toys for me to play with when we visited. I'm actually quite emotional seeing it.

buzby

#112
Quote from: Drop Dead Fred on April 14, 2019, 05:16:55 PM
I had the MG Metro Scalextric for Christmas.
The interesting thing about the Scalextric MG Metro 6R4 model was that they based it on the original prototype developed by the Williams F1 team oar Austin Rover. The final car ended up looking a lot different, with extra wings and spoilers to add downforce and extended air intakes over the back of the doors:
Prototype:

Scalextric model:

Production car:


This was because to save money, the pattern makers in Margate had made the extended wheelarches of their 5R4 model as a simple one-piece add-on moulding for their existing MG Metro model to save money:


Quote from: dr beat on April 14, 2019, 10:39:42 PM
Oh bloody hell Beatties.  My visits to the St Johns Centre Liverpool branch were always a treat; didn't have a clue what to do with any of the stock I just liked looking at it; perhaps rather like Donald Trump and the US nuclear arsenal - well lets hope.
The St. John's Precinct Beatties was my second home, normally lusting after the Tamiya Radio Control kits on the back wall behind the counters (it was slightly less intimidating than the RC plane snobs who hung out at Stan Catchpole's Model World in Bold St., or the model railway types in City Models underneath Radio City in Stanley St.)  I eventually bought my first Rc car kit from that Beatties (after selling my entire collection of  Dinky, corgi and Matchbox cars to finance it), a Tokyo Marui 'Big Bear' Datsun pickup monster truck (which were slightly cheaper than the Tamiya kits):

I've still got it, and the Beatties bag that came with it:


Quote from: dr beat on April 14, 2019, 10:41:04 PM
Here's a question: which is, or was, the biggest ever branch of Beatties?
I believe it was their 'head office' flagship branch in 112 High Holbon (which had been the original showroom for Bassett-Lowke railway models). I managed to visit it a couple of times on trips to London before they went bankrupt and were bought by Modelzone (who also subsequently went bankrupt). The original shop is now a Mcdonalds.

The Culture Bunker

Quote from: dr beat on April 14, 2019, 10:41:04 PM
Here's a question: which is, or was, the biggest ever branch of Beatties?
Not the one in Carlisle, I bet, which didn't have an epic Scalextric lay out, but I'm sure had a very wide range of video games that you struggled to get elsewhere in the city till Game (or it might have been Electronic Boutique) opened up a few years on.

Back in my hometown, we had a fairly decent toy store where you could buy plenty of kit for Scalextric or Subbuteo but I was was mainly resigned to looking through the catalogues with a forlorn look in my youthful eye

QDRPHNC

Quote from: Blumf on April 14, 2019, 06:35:31 PM
Had a Dukes of Hazard (Cunning) Stunt Buster



Not the more featured Barn Buster, my parents evidently hated me.

Minutes of fun:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVMVGCpJ64M

You think your parents hated you? I had the Dempsey and Makepeace version.

Captain Z

Quote from: buzby on April 13, 2019, 12:38:37 AM
I think what you might be describing is the Hot Wheels Rod Runner booster for thier own track system (vdeo of it in action here)

Spot on, as usual.