What are your top ten drag racing-themed toys? (5 Viewers)

[camaro]

Do you remember that the dragsters could be set to launch doing a wheelie? There was a short piece of track with a little catch on it that you’d install where you wanted the wheelie to end. A little hook on the car would get caught by the catch and the car would come out of its wheelie. What’s not to love about that???

i remember, i had a pretty short attention span back then and i decided a given race required too much set up time, I.E reset launch pad, reset the tree, reset the finish line, and repack both parachute traps. etc. I ended up just challenging my buddy to a reaction time contest using the mechanical Christmas tree and forgoing the race altogether

 

[stitcherbob]

Wow, I never knew he had a wheelie car. Thanks for telling me Bob.

 

[NHRAMike]

Do you remember that the dragsters could be set to launch doing a wheelie? There was a short piece of track with a little catch on it that you’d install where you wanted the wheelie to end. A little hook on the car would get caught by the catch and the car would come out of its wheelie. What’s not to love about that???

Here's a good video of how the whole system worked. It also shows the cars in wheelie mode in slo-mo, and when it hit the last joiner with the catch that would lower the nose of the car before it reached the finish gate. The only thing the video is missing is when the car would hit the parachute trap after the finish line, and simulating the dragsters "dropping the laundry". I remember when I played with this as a kid, I moved the catch a segment or two closer to the starting line because I think I had issues keeping the car in my lane because the nose was up too far down the length of the track.

 

[Custom Body Fan]

It was so cool that drag racing was part of American pop culture back in the 60s and into the 70s. I will still run into people my age today that haven't thought about drag racing in 50 years but know who The Snake, Big Daddy and Cha Cha are. For a whole lot of reasons I am happy that is when I grew up!