In the real world, rock crawlers use all kinds of tricks to get over tough obstacles. Low-range gearboxes, huge tires, and serious ground clearance are all the rage. However, one popular 1980s toy had an altogether different idea. What if tires had giant retractable claws?
Enter The Animal. It debuted in 1984 as a product of Lewis Galoob Toys, Inc. If that name sounds familiar, it’s because the now-defunct business was behind such hits as Micro Machines and the Game Genie.
The Animal landed just as America was in the thick of the monster truck craze. The jingle was catchy, with a soaring horn refrain: “Can anything stop… The ANIMAL!!!”
It might look like an RC car, but The Animal actually had no remote control functions whatsoever. Instead, it simply had a switch that engaged forward drive. In its normal setting, the truck would proceed forward on its wheels. When any given wheel slowed down or hit an obstacle, though, it would gradually deploy three claws. This allowed the wheel to grab on to obstacles, lifting the truck over them quite easily.
The basic concept is known in the robotics world as a “wheg,” short for “wheel-leg.” The basic idea is that instead of having a round wheel, you have a hub with several legs mounted on it. Whegs are great for climbing over things, but they’re supremely inefficient for locomotion on smooth surfaces.
The Animal got around this by making its claws retractable. On the flat, it just had round wheels. When an obstacle presented itself, the claws automatically deployed.
There were two further modes of operation, as well. The Animal had an adjustable dial in each wheel hub. In addition to the automatic mode, the adjuster could be turned to lock the claws inside the wheels, or lock them fully out so they were always deployed. The latter was great for getting The Animal through a difficult course, but was horrifically inefficient.
As with so many toys of its era, The Animal was limited by the battery technology of its time. Typical reports are that you were lucky to get an hour of use out of a set of four C-size batteries; 30 minutes was more likely. Using the wheels in the always-deployed mode tended to run the batteries down faster.
Another neat feature was that Galoob gave The Animal a free-wheeling drivetrain. Thus, when the batteries inevitably ran out, you could still have fun pushing it around without damaging the motor or gears.
The Animal ended up spawning a line of related toys. Galoob also developed The Animal Clench, which came with a trailer, and The Animal Xtendor, which was a six-wheeler with a hidden missile launcher. Other body styles also came and went. It eventually went out of production, before being reissued in the early 1990s for a short period.
Other companies got in on the action, too. Kenner produced The Claw in the early 1990s. It had wheels that would split in half, achieving similar results as The Animal’s retractable claws. Today, Spin Master produces a similar toy under The Animal name, but it’s decidedly less cool. It has a goofier design, and only features retractable claws on the front wheels. However, it has a party piece. It’s capable of clawing its way out of the box that it’s sold in.
The one thing bugging me is I can’t quite figure out how the wheels work on The Animal. I suspect the outer tire is mounted to the hub via some kind of sprung mechanism, such that when the wheels are stopped, the drive torque pushes the claws out from inside. But I can’t quite picture what’s going on in there. I’m very tempted to buy a version of The Animal, or perhaps some spare parts off eBay, so I can figure it out.
Thus far, most resources I’ve found are toy reviews on YouTube, and they’re light on detail. But I want to get mechanical about this! The main thing holding me back is prices. I found a single spare wheel which would cost me about $40 to get to Australia, or a semi-destroyed example of the whole truck for $100. Examples that come complete with a box sell for in excess of $300.
Obviously, retractable claws aren’t coming to an off-roader near you any time soon. Someone could probably convince Elon Musk to promise them on the Cybertruck 2, but they wouldn’t be viable in reality. Putting such a complex mechanism on a full-sized vehicle would be a mess. Your wheels would be immensely heavy, and it would be unsprung weight, too. The ride would be awful, and it would be difficult to create a suspension system that would cope. The sudden engagement of the claws on an obstacle would send huge shock loads through the drivetrain, too.
Still, I’d like to see wheels like these on a proper RC car one day. The Animal was neat, but it was only capable of going in a straight line, which limited it somewhat.
Ultimately, The Animal was one of the killer toys of the 1980s. With its awesome sticker pack, badass design, and fully-functional lighting, this was one of the killer gifts to see under your Christmas tree in the mid 80s. Video games would eventually destroy real toys in the battle for children’s affections, but before that, The Animal was king.
Image credits: Galoob; Vallco4048 via YouTube Screenshot; out_the_door_toys/Ebay
Either I or my younger brother had one of these, or maybe we both did. All I remember clearly is that one of them ran over my foot with the claws extended, and one of the claws punched a hole in the cuticle around the nail of my big toe. It hurt like hell, bled like crazy and took quite awhile to heal. 35 or so years later I still have a sense of hostility toward this toy.
Kids down the street had one (they had every toy, it seemed) and it was very disappointing. Ate batteries and got stuck pretty easily, plus it wasn’t RC, so it just went in a (more or less) straight line, but never quite where you aimed it. As someone else posted, the commercial song was more memorable. Wasn’t a big Galoob fan. I never liked MicroMachines, either, in spite of liking small cars—they all had the same shitty proportions with massive wheels and undercarriages and they almost might as well have had three body styles with paint detail changes the only thing separating them. I collected detailed HO (train) scale cars that were briefly popular at a local hobby shop. Revell or someone similar even made some, but most were German. I didn’t have trains, I just liked the cars and that they were in proper scale to each other (a problem I also had with Hot Wheels and Matchbox).
I remember these, along with other awesome off-road oriented toys like the Bandit that my parents wouldn’t buy me.
No, I’m not bitter, why do you ask?
I ‘member
I remember playing with one of these as a kid. I didn’t know the claws came out automatically. I thought you had to twist the hub to do it.
The one my friend had you had to do it manually. Also I don’t think it had a motor in it either. It was early 90s post soviet influx of toys so probably a knockoff anyway
Today I learned the company is named Galoob, and not Galoo as I always thought. Guess I was too busy looking at the toys to read the brand name. Micro Machines were my jam back in the day.
I totally remember commercials for these, but I don’t remember wanting one. I think even at 5 or 6 years old I thought the claws looked kind of dumb and unhelpful. Hell yeah Micro Machines though, I had dozens of those! RIP Galoob.
Remembering 80s battery powered toys. The one that I loved was the ‘Tomy Toys 1986 Monster Machine 16-Wheel Mad Masher Semi Truck’. I had to look it up again. 16 wheels of monster truck goodness. It would go over most everything.
I also had one… I only have vague recollections of it, so I’m guessing it must have broke or I broke it early on.
Its amazing that I haven’t seen that add since it came out over 40 years ago and yet I remembered it all verbatim including the theme song. Guess it shows how impressionable young kids are.
I had one as a kid, I think I was 5 or 6. Can confirm that they were a lot of fun, but they can’t swim.
I killed a lot of toys in water or mud pits, haha.
Another former owner checking in. I had forgotten all about that thing until this article. Thanks for the nostalgia shot.
I also had one. The wheels would twist and eat a blanket in a terrifying manner.
A friend had one of these, and if I recall, the claws are mounted to the drive hub and the wheel/tire is on a grooved track around the hub with springs on it. When there is enough resistance, the wheel/tire rotates around the drive hub, exposing the claws. My friend broke the wheel off of his and we played with it, but that was 30-something years ago and my memory is hazy.
Had this as a kid. I do remember it almost always had dead batteries. You are on the right track on how the claws deployed. They are spring loaded. I remember being able to turn a wheel with the machine off by hand about a 1/4 turn to make the claws extend. Letting go of the wheel would cause them to snap back.
I can just imagine my 5 y/o boy getting one of these and breaking those claws off within the first 10 minutes of play..
Holy shit! I had one of these when I was a kid! I have not thought about The Animal in a long, long time. I remember it had a competing toy that worked by having the wheels separate into whegs when they hit resistance from an obstacle. I want to say it was called The Claw or something like that.
I might still have The Animal in my basement. I kept some of my favorite toys to give to younger cousins over the years and eventually a son if I had one, but instead I had a daughter and she had no interest in vintage toys for boys. I’ll poke around later and see if I can find it.
I wanted one of these so badly when I was a kid.
Don’t feel bad that you never got one.
I had one. They weren’t great.
Would get stuck on almost anything.
Commercial was better than the actual toy.
That was the case with a lot of toys back then. None of the Tyco RC cars of that era were as fast or capable as they were advertised on TV.
Your Turbo Hopper didn’t win all the races and not get stuck in sand???
Can confirm. I didn’t have one, but my best friend did. It was really cool when it worked, but it didn’t work very well on most surfaces, so it was a pretty big letdown compared to how cool the commercial made it seem.
It was definitely better at tearing down obstacles than it was a climbing them. I still had fun setting up light things like Legos and letting it dig through them. They used a tiger on the box, but a mole would have been more accurate.
You ask for miracles and I give you the FBI…or Manglor Mountain.
I can remember playing with one of these and wondering what was going on with the wheels. I was born in 1993, but my grandma is a legit, full-blown hoarder (she could have been on the show, it’s that bad) so when we were kids, we would play with my mom’s, aunts, and uncles old toys while we were there. Naturally the truck didn’t actually work, which is probably why it was so perplexing. It’s probably still there, my grandma and uncle have been “cleaning” the house out, but it still looks as bad as it always did to me.
I’m starting to think my mom has borderline hoarder tendencies. I wish our old toys were among the stuff she hoarded. She’s got 40-year-old Tupperware in the basement, but the Star Wars toys ended up in the trash.
My grandma has EVERYTHING. Star Wars toys included. They were cleaning out one of their three large outbuildings and found a box my mom had packed up. Before she left for college. In 1981. There’s a whole room in her house literally full of stuff, that no one has entered in over 15 years. Everything in there is probably ruined, there was a roof leak over that room for years and while they got the roof fixed…no one has been in there to see what happened.
My mom kept every toy my sister and I had in preparation for grand kids. Apparently the rubberized band that holds GI Joe’s torso to his pelvis tends to dry rot over 30 years. Some of He-Man’s companions also suffered severed limbs due to weakened plastic. Castle Grayskull is still pretty awesome, though.
My niece got a lot of enjoyment out of Barbie’s Dream House and the Barbie GMC Motorhome.
This also happened to my Joes when I was a kid putting them through some extreme posing, I just replaced them with actual rubber bands 🙂
I’m a Matchbox/Hot Wheels/random diecast guy myself, but I’ve saved every model I purchased or given to as gifts. I even picked up on Ebay two big plastic models from the 1970s-the yellow Malibu Barbie Beach Buggy and the blue Big Jim Buggy (the same as the Barbie Buggy). Both are real keepers.
I’m kind of partial to Big Trak for 80’s motorized toy nostalgia. Also the GI Joe main battle tank. I would build a house out of Lincoln Logs and then set the tank loose, recreating the scene from the James Garner movie “Tank”.
Psh, I had a Cross Boss. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rnu7_p_Sj_w
Had one as a young boy. Still sing the song from the commercial in my head on a regular basis.
I whistle it whenever I do something remotely manly
As you should. As we all should.
They were cool, if kinda fiddly. Now bang for the offroad toy buck, let’s talk…Stompers!
We used to modify Stompers with bigger everything except the body. Then we’d setup mini mud bog races.
I had the Stomper Monster Truck with the paddle wheels on it, it was great for dirt, mud, water and sand. Also had a few of the OG ones, and yeah they were a lot more fun than you’d think they were.
I loved Stompers. I distinctly remember feeling not that I had a little toy monster truck to play with, but that monster trucks were cool because they were like real life Stompers. Were they cheap? That would explain why I had a couple.
I have three right now – the Chevy S-10, Jeep CJ-7 and my favorite, the AMC Eagle SX/4.
I had a few Stompers and maybe and even deeper cut. Does anyone else remember Rough Riders?
Not only do I remember these, I had these.
I loved working in a mall toy store from 1985-1990.
As an 80’s kid, one of my biggest regrets for my son is that he’ll never know the excitement of going to a real Toys R Us. The last one in our area closed when he was about two months old. He’s been in one, but there won’t be memories.
Working in a mall, a big one with fountains and bridges over water features and fancy anchor department stores is now a fond memory. Going to big toy stores like Toys R Us and Kiddie City as a child was fantastic.
Back then, purchasing things was an experience. Now you just order something and there it is. I remember going to multitudes of different stores trying to find something and also get the best deal on things. You’d spend a day at the mall, eat at the food court, sure it was all mass consumerism but it was fun. I miss being able to do that. I know it’s more efficient but those activities created multitudes of different jobs as well.
I would watch after school cartoons like GI Joe, Transformers, and He-Man so I knew what parents and grandparents were shopping for.