Autopian Asks is supposed to be a light and breezy item easily whipped up and presented to you, our esteemed readers, so you can provide the real content: your insightful, amusing, thoughtful, and/or wry comments on whatever it is The Autopian is asking.
I did not do this, and instead lavished far too many words to the topic at hand because it’s near and dear to my heart: toys. Specifically, toy versions of cars and other vehicles, as I’m sure you aren’t hoping for an extra 1,000 words on Big Jim or Soaring Sam or Vertibird (though I will happily discuss them in the comments).
With actually operating a car more or less a decade away for a typical car-crazed kid like myself in the 70s, toys were the outlet for my nascent automania. Thankfully, it was a golden era for playthings, and as I’m sure you geezers my age will attest, we had some bangers. Here are just a few of the car-themed toys from my youth that have really stuck with me:
Stick Shifters
One of my earliest car memories is riding in the passenger seat of my Dad’s Super Beetle (unbelted, of course) and wondering what exactly was going on with the shift knob and how Dad knew what to do and when to do it. It certainly looked fun, and when Dad let me run through the pattern in the driveway while he explained it all, precisely none of it registered in my 5-year-old brain – but pushing and pulling that shift lever stirred something in me as surely as it had stirred the Beetle’s four-speed internals.
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And so, when Hasbro’s Stick Shifters landed under the Christmas tree that year, I was thrilled to have a four-speed of my own. The stick action wasn’t nearly as satisfying as the real thing, and I shot the car out of the launcher exclusively in fourth gear which made shifting irrelevant, but still, the toy made a real impression.
It also made me wonder why Dad never tach’d the Beetle to redline and dumped the clutch in fourth to wheelie off the line, which was Stick Shifters whole schtick. “Stick Shifters, get ’em in gear, gonna make a wheelie, gonna disappear!”
Evel Knievel Stunt Cycle
Oh man, Evel Knievel. Kids went nuts for the star-spangled daredevil in the 1970s, and Ideal Toys had a monster hit on its hands with the Evel Knievel Stunt Cycle. In toy form, Evel was an 8-inch “bendy” figure made of vinyl molded over a wire skeleton that rendered a much more durable rider than Evel himself ever was, and the Stunt Cycle was kid-powered via a hand-cranked launcher. The launcher meshed with a gear on the Stunt Cycle’s rear wheel that spun a metal flywheel up to a bazillion rpm to not only store energy, but also act as a gyro that kept Evel and the Stunt Cycle balanced on two wheels.
It worked! The “King of the Stuntmen” could really put on a show with impressive speed, wheelies, and sky-high jumps. Perhaps most entertainingly, nearly every trip out of the launcher ended with Evel painfully ejecting from his machine (it looked painful, anyway) and eating shit in spectacular fashion – “the full Caesar’s Palace,” if you will.
Ideal’s Evel Knievel line expanded into a whole range of vehicles (you can see them all in the UK-market commercial above), but the Stunt Cycle was always the star of the show. So much so, in fact, that it’s been brought back twice; Playing Mantis resurrected the toy in the late 90s (yes, I have one), and you can get your own Evel Knievel Stunt Cycle right now at EvelKnievelToys.com. There’s a whole scene for these things, with kids and adults really going wild with their Evels Knievel.
SpinWelder & Riviton
I was always a construction-toy kid, and these takes on DIY fun from Mattel and Parker Brothers were absolutely mesmerizing to me. I never actually owned a SpinWelder or Riviton set myself, but the neighbor kid had them. However, they weren’t really his thing since he preferred the mindless frenetic action of toys like Gnip-Gnop. And so, he let me weld and rivet to my heart’s content.
Weld, you say? Indeed. SpinWelder was a friction-welding toy that enabled you to construct all sorts of vehicles by jamming a spinning plastic rod against the butt joints of the pieces you were assembling. Friction turned the plastic rod and the parts to be mated molten, fusing them together when the plastic cooled. It took skill, patience, and an ample supply of lantern batteries to produce good welds (good as in structurally sound, there was no way you were gonna stack dimes with this thing), and the fumes cast by the melting plastic were surely toxic, but still: real welding. Neat!
Riviton held similar “real car-building technology” appeal as SpinWelder, and as you might guess from the name, it allowed kids to rivet panels, girders, and other parts together to make cars, boats, helicopters, you name it. But unlike SpinWelder models, creations built with Riviton could be disassembled thanks to the clever, reusable rubber rivets.
Here’s how it worked: when you placed a Riviton rivet in the gun and squeezed the handle, the rivet would be captured by its flange and then stretched by a pin that extended into the rivet as you squeezed the rivet gun’s trigger to its stop. Then all you had to do was insert the rivet through the holes in the parts you wanted to mate, release the trigger, and the rivet would return to shape, now too large to pass through the holes. Presto, the parts were joined. The gun also removed the rivets and the whole process was pretty satisfying, as I recall.
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Kenner SSP – Super Sonic Power
Kenner’s SSP line captured my kidmagination with wild designs and a few real-car subjects including that favorite of 70s kids, the Superbird. I wasn’t alone, as SSPs were a big hit. SSPs tapped the Hot Wheels zeitgeist but with larger-scale models, and they were pretty dang fast by the standards of my seven-ish-year-old self. Each SSP carried a metal flywheel wrapped in a solid rubber tire. A toothed “T-Handle Power Stick” engaged a small gear cast into the flywheel to spin it. Bigger kids could really yank the Power Stick and get that wheel spinning up to serious RPM before sending their SSPs down the street at ankle-shattering speeds. Good times.
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Stomper 4X4s
The toy cars of my era were exclusively devoted to speed. Hot Wheels leaned hard on velocity, Johnny Lightning upped the ante, and slow-rolling Matchbox took a drubbing until it introduced new Superfast wheels to satisfy kids’ need for speed. And then Stompers came along, with battery power and low gearing (as in numerically high ratios) that let the little AA-powered, Hot-Wheel-sized trucks crawl over steep grades and off-road obstacles on their gear-like tires.
Schaper licensed a whole bunch of real-truck designs for the Stompers line, and I spent hours creating courses for the authentic little rigs. Every kid I knew had at least one Stomper, and collectors are still crazy for the tiny 4X4s – just take a look at Ebay. Schaper offered terrain playsets for trucks, but the plastic courses paled in comparison to what could be achieved with couch cushions, blankets, books, and whatever else was around the house – not to mention the uncharted realms of the backyard.
Lego Expert Builder Sets (It’s Technics Now)
Unless you were a Lego kid in the late 70s, you cannot fully appreciate the massive leap the brand made when the first Expert Builder kits arrived on the scene. Other than wheels, pulleys, and parts (sorry, elements) that allowed hinge motion, Lego was very light on elements that would let you build functional mechanical models. But with Expert Builder, hoo boy, now the possibilities were seemingly endless. Gears! Pivots! Shafts! Axles!
I had the forklift set seen above, and though it looks crude today, it was downright revelatory in 1977. The rear wheels steered via rack and pinion, and the fork raised and lowered with a pair of racks – endlessly fascinating stuff to kid-me. But the set that really blew every Lego builder’s mind was the 853 Car Chassis, as seen below. It had an inline-four engine with pistons that go up and down you guys. Look at that steering setup, complete with a universal joint to get wheel motion down to the steering rack. And adjustable seats! Again, it’s almost laughably simple compared to any modern Technics set, but back in the 70s? This was peak Lego.
Hot Wheels Sizzlers
Yes, of course Hot Wheels are on this list– but it’s not the free-rolling models I want to discuss here, though I certainly had plenty of those. Instead, it was Sizzlers that really revved up kid-me, pun intended, as Sizzlers were motorized machines. It was novel enough that Mattel managed to fit a battery and motor in the 1/64 scale cars, but it was even more impressive that they were actually fast, and could be recharged in a few minutes via the “Juice Machine.” Fittingly designed as a miniature gas pump, the Juice Machine housed a pair of D batteries to transfer the titular juice to your Sizzler.
Mattel offered Sizzler sets with the traditional orange track components, but the Fat Track sets were where the real fun was to be had. True to their name, the fat (as in wide) laneless tracks gave Sizzlers plenty of room to run free, and the high-banked turns kept them from flying off the racecourse as they battled flat out on the plastic superspeedway. You weren’t controlling anything, of course, but that chaos was part of the fun, and the action was thrilling.
Alright, I have certainly gone on long enough. Now it’s your turn: what were your favorite car, truck, motorcycle, and you-name-it vehicle toys?
To the comments! … or, if you want even more toys, check out these toy-takes from Torch: A Gun That Shoots Cars, Punchcard-Controlled Cars, And Tiny Gas-Powered Toy Cars: Weird Commercials Of Toys Past
Oh, man, the Fat Track unlocked a core Sizzlers memory! I had both the orange track and the Fat Track, plus the Power Pit (a gas station-looking setup to charge the cars) and the lap counter. (Thanks, Mom and Dad)
But my enduring hobby has been 1:64 cars. I’m now on my third go-round collecting Matchbox/Hot Wheels … though I appreciate the AW/Johnny Lightning cars for their detailing and true scale size.
Top 2 toys – Smash-Up Derby cars and Dukes of Hazzard Happy Meal boxes.
I had others I remember fondly like some particularly sturdy models that I’d play with, a handful of Hot Wheels I particularly dug, or the Knight Rider remote control KITT I recall being from Radio Shack, but those two are the top of the list.
I had the Evel dragster – it met it’s end when I did a run down the driveway and driver and dragster were tragically crushed by a passing Nova (the driver did stop to offer condolences). I was a lego kid as well, and you’re absolutely right about the car chassis kit. That thing hit when I was the right age to appreciate it (and build it correctly). As I recall, I believe you could also build an alternative dune buggy thing with that kit. After doing the full chassis, that was the next build and I think I kept it in that config for a long time.
Ah yes, the SSP racers. I had the Smash-Up Derby versions as a kid, which are the ones that look smashed up and lose doors and the hood when they hit something. While cleaning out my mother’s house I found them again and soon they will go in the curio cabinet in my office next to my Evel Knievel and his motorcycle.
I also found my Hot Wheels collection, with many of the cars covered in enamel paint after I got into building model kits.
I recall most of these, and still have quite a few. My parents were smart to save my old toys instead of tossing, donating, or garage sale-ing them. I like the Riviton and Sizzler set, plus anything Hot Wheels or Matchbox. Stompers and MicroMachines were great. I still buy Hot Wheels cars too!
Also loved my Tyco slot cars and HO trains. Always wanted to the RR crossing piece but never did get it.
Transformers were a lot of fun, as were the GI Joe/Cobra vehicles. I was never that into the action figures. I just wanted the vehicles. My parents said no way Jose to the USS Flagg aircraft carrier – they are worth a lot now.
My friends were impressed with Big Trak, the microprocessor was one I later studied in my EE courses as it was a basic one at the time.
The real steel Tonka trucks . . . https://i.etsystatic.com/39408712/r/il/bf8fd6/4922590821/il_1140xN.4922590821_lamj.jpg
I had a gym bag of HotWheels/Matchbox/andtoalesserextentMajorette cars I shared with my younger brother (with the letter of our first name in nail polish on the bottom so we knew whose was whose). I also had a fleet of Tonka sized vehicles, and a few “Adventure People” hand-me-downs from my older brother. On top of that there were slot cars (some were my father’s from the 1950s) and a weird plastic track system that had a “rail” in the middle that the battery operated cars would latch onto and crawl up walls or upside down at impressively slow speeds.
The one car toy I got really hyped up for from commercials was the “Air Jammer Bug Scrammer”. You pumped it up with a mini bicycle pump and it would (supposedly) tear off a great speed. In reality it would go a few feet before puttering out. First time I remember TV lying to me.
I can’t remember the name brand of this toy, but you bought it at the kind of independent toy store that sold Brio wooden trains, Playmobil, etc. It was imported, maybe German? It had a track set up and cars that had some self propulsion. We had a couple of sports cars and a police car. It came with a separate cat and mouse set that was a figure eight. If one of the cars, say the cat car, bumped into the rear of the mouse car, it made the mouse car accelerate. The track itself was too hard for a kid to assemble, but it was easy to keep the cars going compared to slot cars.
When I was a kid, our Sizzlers track had a four car lap counter that helped re-sort the cars. When Sizzlers were brought back when my son was little, I found the oval track kind of boring compared to counting the laps. They were way too expensive on eBay to buy.
The orange Hot Wheels track was great for slapping your sibling.
https://www.theautopian.com/what-were-your-favorite-car-toys-autopian-asks/#comment-524076
it did funnel the cars into one line – as a kid I remember lead changes occurring as cars entered the lap counter.
I remember many an angry red welt caused by the orange track slaps!
OMG! Slapping the siblings with the track was a “go to weapon” in my house.
The raised edges on the track left a couple of great marks…
Thanks for the great reminder from days gone by…
Match box or Hot Wheels cars were by far the automotive toys I played with the most, and I still have a few. None are in even decent condition because I played with them constantly, but if we are talking about a single toy, it would have to be the PTO truck from Buddy L. It had 4WD, working lights, and a working wench. I even still remember the song from the commercial.
I had a Matchbox Saab Sonnet in blue. I tried to blow it up with a firecracker because that’s what young boys do. I didn’t manage to blow it up – however I somehow gave it super speed. The shell separated from the frame a little bit and for whatever reason, it became SUPER fast on the plastic tracks that you snapped together. That little charred Matchbox Saab Sonnet was the king of the neighborhood.
Stompers were pretty fun as a kid. Their were some crash up cars that shed body panels that I always wanted, but had to make due with the Crash Hotwheels when they came out instead. and of course the most fun for me back then was eh GI Joe creations. there was a bad guy car with a Trans Am front clip that I liked to mad max around my buddies back yard sand pit a lot.
Matchbox Cars by Lesney.
I still have all of mine and I’m now 57.
Recently I saw a Matchbox 2019 Mazda3 car (Which is the car I now drive, the Matchbox is a hatch unfortunately, I have a sedan. Does anyone know if you can buy it as a sedan?) in the local Woolworths shop and I just had to have it. It cost me $2.00, which if this was back when I was a kid playing with these was 4 weeks pocket money. A serious investment at the time.
But oh the nostalgia!!! It felt so *good* just to buy a Matchbox car again and I excitedly opened the box once I was back in my (real) Mazda 3 car and I did a few burn out laps along the top of the dash. Mentally I was 7 years old once more and I didn’t give a damm who saw me doing it!
This car now sits in front of me on the base of my computer screen stand.
And yes… every now and then I pick it up and do a couple of burns around the desk top with it, drifting through the corners of course.
Lionel Power Passers slot car track, the cars had a lane change feature!! me and my Brothers spent hours and hours racing each other!
You can see it in action here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rmln2g_4zd4
Speaking of Evel Knievel, last month I took a trip out to Boise for my nephew’s wedding. It was a quick trip, but with a little spare time my final day before flying back, I ripped out to Twin Falls for a pilgrimage to the site of Evel Knievel’s failed Snake River Canyon jump, almost exactly 50 year earlier. It wasn’t much to look at, but you could still make out the remaining structure.
What was most surprising was that you could go up on it. Everything online said that it was on private property and that you could see it from a distance, but there was a trail right up to it along with a parking area nearby, and the fencing that divided the private properties from what was a public walking path went around the ramp.
I think I have two. One was my favorite of all the Matchbox and Hot Wheels cars, “Space Patrol”, a sleek 2-door coupe not based on a production car. It had a chromed V8 with wicked pipes at the rear, a bubble-top fighter-jet greenhouse, and twin red lasers mounted right on the center of the hood (take that!). Coolest Matchbox or Hot Wheels ever.
Second would be the TCR “Total Control Racing” track and car sets. A friend of mine had a lot of them, and then I scored a huge box of track at a flea market. We combined them to create a gigantic track that ran a circle pattern through 5 rooms in his house. “Slot” cars where you can change lanes!
I fondly remember the hours I spent setting up ramps and obstacles made out of various household items and boxes for this toy.
Man, I forgot about Stompers. I remember those gear-looking tires being made of dense foam. Memories.
My favorite was probably my Tamiya Hornet, which required assembly from a granular level but was a blast to rip around the backyard or the local R/C track with.
I still have one of those LEGO Expert Builder cars – the one that sorta-kinda looks like a Beetle pan – on my bookshelf after digging it out of my mother’s attic and restoring it a few years ago. About the time I stopped fiddling with the Team Losi R/C truck I had picked up a couple years before that.
The Evel Knievel sets were long ago destroyed.
Bigtrak.
I’m going to spin the question a little…
I’m actually in the market for some car toys; I have a 6 and a 3 year old and Christmas is coming. Sure we’ve got plenty of Matchbox and Hot Wheels laying around, but no track sets or garages or any of that. Anyone have recommendations for modern Hot Wheels track/playsets? Back in the day, I’d be able to go to a Toy’s R Us and actually look at what’s available. Today it’s a little more difficult to tell what’s legit and what isn’t. You’re stuck with online shopping or whatever is left at the Target, which is typically the stuff nobody wants.
Lego Cars and Hot wheels describe my childhood toys pretty well. You could add Thomas train track sets but those aren’t cars.
A pair of Habitrail dragsters:
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/e1/5e/64/e15e6489c7ddc78e5473ae0227b5b288.jpg
Vroom vroom!
(The delicious irony of a 1970s race car literally powered by a hamster came included in every box, no extra charge.)
Estes rocket cars. I think they were called Cold Power. Lightweight chassis on foam tires covered by a thin body shell. Instructions were firm about only using them guided by a string secured with concrete nails. Once the can of Freon (!) was emptied, we quickly resorted to using model rocket engines. Without the string, they became ground-to-ground missiles. Stupid fun—literally.
We began our own Space Race this way as kids too.
We just taped bottle rockets to matchbox cars…rather unpredictable, but endlessly amusing to young boys.
Lego, Especially technic and trains, Scalextric and books. I did other stuff too but it was mainly those. Then when I was about 11 my dad bought home a Commodore 64, I taught myself to code on that and a couple of years later sold my Lego and Scalextric to buy an Amiga, Which I still have and use… But since then I also built up a large collection of Lego again.
LEGO 853 Car Chassis was my first Technic set in 1978 as a Christmas present. For the next several years, I would acquire more Technic sets and built different types of vehicles, including the transverse-mounted front-wheel-drive with V6 engine (that was before LEGO came up with V4, V8, and like) and gearbox with complicated gear selector linkage.
Being German, we also had Carrera Slot Car Set and Fischertechnik, the latter is what my brother spent hours and hours working during the late 1960s and early 1970s until the raging hormones diverted his attention to the girls.