Let’s be honest here: kids are kind of monsters. It’s not their fault, of course. Their little brains aren’t really finished yet, so they don’t always show the most tact or empathy or any number of complex emotions. That also means when they play, the situations they can imagine happening can often be, when viewed objectively, horrific. Giant pandas destroying entire neighborhoods, massive blanket tsunamis rendering entire Lego blocks to rubble, and, yes, horrific car crashes, often by the dozens, are absolutely par for the course when it comes to playing.
That’s why I wasn’t really surprised to learn about an old French toy car known as the Crac’Auto Crash Car, which was a little metal wind-up toy car designed to simulate a really horrible wreck.
I first saw the thing on this Instagram post:
View this post on Instagram
Of course, I was fascinated, not as much by the concept of a toy car designed for getting all wrecked, but more how this one was executed. See, when I was a kid, I remember toy cars designed to be smashed to bits, but they were always done in the context of a demolition derby, like Kenner’s Smash-Up Derby toys:
Man, there’s a lot of fun stuff in there: the T-pull-handle mechanism (which I remember from an old Batman motorcycle toy my dad brought me back once after a business trip that somehow looms large in my memory), the fact that one of the cars is a Beetle, the ramps, and the overall feeling of destructive glee – I remember all of this, vividly.
But look at the context here: the cars willingly fling into one another, all part of the grand sport of the Derby of Demolition, and a key part of the toy is putting the cars back together. Parts fly off, the cars spin out, but the overall tone is excitement and laughter.
Hot Wheels also had a similar sort of thing in the 1980s, the Crack-Ups line of cars that did a shockingly good job of simulating crash damage, as you can see here:
Okay, so two things: those rotating panels are a very clever way of having quick-repair car damage, and I’m pretty sure the kid in the sideways hat is the same kid who almost got eaten by a possessed tree in the 1982 movie Poltergeist:
Damn, that is a scary tree. But, back to the Hot Wheels, the crashes there were still all about excitement, and the damage wasn’t exactly catastrophic.
Oh, then in the 1990s, America’s mania for those driving safety PSAs with crash test dummies (that had been given, unsettlingly considering their vocations life and speech) was translated into more smash-uppable toy cars:
Now, let’s look at the Crac’Car, seen here in its crashed state:
Photo elements from Jouetsanciens.fr
So, I may be reading more into this than is warranted, but the way that clever little wind-up toy “wrecks” just seems more, I don’t know, tragic? It looks not just wrecked, but mangled. I love the little printed inline-four engine illustration on the block up front, implying the wreck was so bad the whole engine block is wrenched out of its mounts.
This looks like a wreck where someone – probably someone young and beautiful with an amazing future ahead of them – died, tragically. What is it about this toy?
Photo elements from Jouetsanciens.fr, Worthpoint
I’ll admit, it’s a very clever mechanism, the way the whole thing contorts and warps without actually coming apart – the lifespan of a Kenner Smash-Up Derby toy had to be pretty limited, because of all the flying parts, which I’m sure were lost under couches or slurped up by vacuum cleaners within weeks of purchase. But not the Crac’Car! You could re-enact horrific wrecks, over and over!
I don’t know if it’s the Frenchness of it, or maybe it’s how the box art shows a car crashed into a tree in a way that reminds one of the death of the famous author Albert Camus, but there’s a strange gravity this toy has that the other smash-up cars, thankfully, lack.
What a strange toy, all the drama of a wreck without even the pretense of silly fun or a sporting event or whatever. Have fun, kids!
For me it’s the door hanging open, revealing the grimy interior, which really sells the creepiness.
I remember a toy car from the ’80s that was similar to this but had a more modern “crumple zone”. It was about 1/25 scale, from about the firewall back it was the normal hard plastic toy car but the front wheels were mounted on a piece that slid in and out from that on a sort of ratchet and the front fenders/hood/grille were soft vinyl rigidly mounted to the firewall and by the front bumper to the leading edge of the sliding ratchet so it would kinda-sorta fold up when you slammed it against a wall.
Can’t remember what it was called though.
In the 60s I had a couple of toy cars called Crashmobiles. These would blow apart on contact with an obstacle. They were not demolition derby cars or racers, just plain old cars you could wreck at will. They were closer to the Kenner toys you mentioned in terms of execution (plastic panels flying off), but akin to the French car you featured in terms of play intent. Of course, this was also the era of macabre pop songs like Teen Angel, Last Kiss, Tell Laura I Love Her, Honey, Dead Man’s Curve, Leader of the Pack, so death, and violent death at that, was obviously viewed differently. Didn’t screw me up at all [eye twitch].
The accident card in Milles Bornes is pretty brutal as well, really gotta make sure kids understand the brutal fleetingness of life, I guess.
https://www.geekyhobbies.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Mille-Bornes-Accident-Card-728×410.jpg.webp
Then again, I had one of the Crash Test Dummies cars, and would frequently stage elaborate accidents with my toy cars, so some kids are just inherently destructive and can be marketed to?
I found one of my old crack-up’s last time I was in my parents basement. The spinning body panels still work, but that little car was in rough shape.
I spent many hours with the Hot Wheels Crack-Up toy. There was another diecast toy the same scale that had a mechanism to induce a rollover. In both cases I was more interested in the mechanism than simulated wreckage.
French, you say?
https://live.staticflickr.com/5014/5405093426_58ccd0b4e8_c.jpg
I saw Poltergeist when I was 5 years old. At that time, there was a 6′ diameter mostly dead maple tree right outside the window of the old farmhouse I grew up in. Man, that movie messed me up big-time for an entire summer.
We had the Crash Test Dummies car when it was new. It included a deformable car, animals that could be squashed – complete with tire tread prints! – and of course the crash test dummies.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Incredible_Crash_Dummies
Ours was the same as this one, apparently. Nostalgia can be expensive.
We had the Vince & Larry Crash Test Dummy action figures in the 80’s. We found them, fully intact, when cleaning out the house after my dad passed away. Sadly they disappeared when someone came to the house to purchase his antique pocket watch collection.
We were apparently so into the Crash Dummies that my mom made a jumpsuit for my eldest brother that eventually got passed down through the family until I was big enough to wear it, at which time the reference was apparently dated.
This thing just needs a tube of fake blood to be perfect.
“This is what happens when you text and drive Billy. Don’t do it. DON’T DO IT!”