Sunday 24 February 2008

Trik Trak



Welcome to day three of a series of blogs about that Bathtub that I blogged about yesterday. I'm sure you're all sick of that by now, but this last little part of the story was too cool not to share.

When I ripped the paper off the package, pretty eagerly like usual, I ignored the box at first. It's a box, right? Well, upon closer inspection it seems its a REALLY cool box for something called a Trik Trak.

I'm guessing 60s/70s in origin, and that it's some kind of Scalextric type deal, but I'd be delighted to hear from anyone who can tell me for sure one way or another. Anyone got one? Send pics!

Now I want a Trik Trak AND an Xbox 360. There goes my bank balance!

JB

1 comment:

Mark Bunds said...

Trik Trak was a toy racing set that had free-running battery powered cars (no slots or throttle control) and track parts mostly consisting of curved sections that were laid out on a smooth surface, using no straight sections to guide the cars. The car was "aimed" at these curves which would guide the cars around, and upon exiting the curve, they would run across the bare floor to the next curve. Other accessories, like jump ramps and finish flags could be placed somewhere on the course to create figure-8 courses, jumps, or whatever the player wanted to lay out. Some curve sections would rotate 90 degrees every time a car passed through it (these were the "Triks"), allowing the player to create "switches" that would divert the following cars to a different layout. These were really fun, but the cars consumed batteries quickly, making slot racers and Hot Wheels much more economical to play with.