Google
 

Monday

Scalextric

Possibly the coolest toy ever invented. You could continually add to it or buy extras like crossovers, plastic barriers, bridge supports, start grid, lap counter and so forth. You'd pretty much be getting this from the nearest Beatties (whatever happened to Beatties?)

To this day I can still remember the smell that came off the metal brushes on the bottom of the car. Basically my memories of this toy are as follows:

Bulbs in the headlights brighter than the sun as 30000volts of electricity surge up through the wire brushes just before you slam it into the skirting board at a scale speed of 300mph.

Taking 400 years to put together if Dad wasn't about.

After 400 years snapping the track together, put the car on the track, pull the trigger, car goes nowhere but a shower of sparks erupt from a join in the track.

Fix this problem then put the car on backwards and have it reverse at a scale speed of 400mph.

Put both cars on the track and try and drive them at the same time, scale speeds of 1000mph reached, skirting boards destroyed.

After 1 hour of breaking the scale land speed record you become tired of having to reach across to put the car back on the track, as it flys off you reach over and put your hand on both lanes of the track, 1.5 gigawatts surges up your arm.

Get the Gold porsche, lift up the rear of the car, pull the trigger and let the wheels spin up roughly to the speed of light, drop the porsche and watch it snake up the track and slam through the plastic barriers before wedging itself under the sofa after doing 400 rolls across the carpet.

Tired, electrocuted you now become even lazier with your trigger control and soon the cars cease to move, making a high pitched screaming noise. You have sheared the plastic cog as you red lined the Gold Porsche to 350,000rpm for the 456627th time that day.

There's always one piece of track you could not undo as those bloody plastic loop things where too hard for your little fingers to bend back....

Laying your action man figure across the track attempting to simulate a decapitation by running in to it with your blue elf tirell....

Also, did anybody else convince themselves that one hand controller was faster than the other? In my house this would lead to severe sibling rivalry.

The best though, was when you would get back from beatties with your brand new brushes to replace the dirty skiddy ones that had done over 1000km. Pure gold.

Those were the days.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nice!

I used to suffer from "Scalextrance". A common condition whereby you find the exact spot at wich to hold the trigger for each part of the track. This would result in a perfect, near eternal run where I would certainly have lost my mind if it wasn't for my call to come and eat my liver and bacon with lumpy gravy. Either that, or my brother would come and fart on my head!

Happy Days indeed.
Parsons

Simon Barrett said...

hahahaha,

I remember those days, tho it was in the 60 that I first came accross scaletrix. They were a blast! Actually the whole genre has not disapeared.

In the late 90's I was living in San Diego and had a buddy that was into 'zippy cars'. These were a little smaller than scaletrix, but looked like a lot of fun.

He belonged to a club that had custom built, something like an 8 lane wide raceway.

Good Times!

viagra online said...

nothing is impossible in this world, and this post is the proof!

blogger templates 3 columns | Webtalks