fall inside a hole

Tomy Drive Yourself Crazy/Chibi Driver

First written December 23, 2024

Tomy produced the battery-operated Drive Yourself Crazy game in 1976. The game involves a simple steering wheel arrangement and a spool of plasticized paper roadway that the player must "drive" the car along, getting points the further they get while avoiding obstacles. In Japan, Toy Town, who had connections to Tomy, released the toy as Chibi Driver. Also released was a rocket-themed Runaway Rocket toy with a black rocket and a Monster Machines Challenge monster truck version as well as the Swervin' Derby driving game.

In 1980 Tomy sued Durham Industries, Inc over their Mickey Mouse Star Ship toy which is a direct rip of the concept, mechanism, and case of Drive Yourself Crazy - its even the same color! The court decided that the direct copy was lawful...

Chibi Driver

In Japan the Drive Yourself Crazy toy was released as Chibi Driver (ちびっ子ドライバー) or Little Driver by Toy Town. This release includes an extra roll depicting a second course and the back of the box shows how to swap the rolls over.

As far as I know, although this was the only(?) release with an extra roll, the internal spools and mechanism is the same on the other versions of the toy as well.

The color of this case and car is the same as the original driving version of the toy. There are stickers on the gearshift labeling the directions in Japanese. One roll is an animal-themed jungle path while the other travels through a city.

On the back of the case is the C battery compartment and, on this version, a Toy Town sticker over where the tooling says Tomy.

Inside the case are two spools with the gearshift sliding back and forth to drive the background up or down. Both spools can be removed to swap the rolls around.

Under the internal cover is the drive motor with a reduction that has a sprung slip clutch and a long gear to let the shifter slide back and forth.

The switch on the right turns the motor on, and then the gearshift can be used to start the car going. The idea of the game is you drive forward following the branching paths until you hit one of the obstacles. When you hit one, you are supposed to reverse back to the start of the course and start again, memorizing the turns you take until you can eventually reach the end. I like the idea of being able to flip into reverse and avoid the hazards if you see them coming and can change gears fast enough before hitting them. The back of the box suggests a two-player mode where one player is the "referee" with a hand on the gearshift to stop the game if the driving player hits an obstacle to prevent cheating I suppose.

A somewhat simple toy, but well-executed and especially nice in this version with a swappable course. Being interested in Toy Town, I figured this was the most fitting version of this toy to seek out - if I come across any of the export releases in the wild for a good price they will certainly be documented here at some point.