fall inside a hole
Illco Mickey Mouse Fun Castle Roller Coaster (late 1970s-1980s)
First written October 31, 2024Illco, or the Illfelder Importing Company of New York, produced a few different Mickey Mouse licensed toys in the 1970s including several motorized and gravity-fed toys like this Fun Castle Roller Coaster. It seems likely that this set was first released in the later 1970s and survived into the early 1980s. At least three different styles of Illco logo were used on the boxes for this set over its run including a later variant specifically marked for sale at KMart.
Mickey Mouse Fun Castle Roller Coaster (later KMart release)
Later, these sets continued to be sold in KMart stores - what appears to be a KMart price sticker on the cover of the box is actually printed right on.
Production changes for these later sets included changing the metal roller wheels over to a plastic style that probably don't run as smoothly as the older type.
Set contents| Quantity |
Item |
Photo |
|---|---|---|
| 3 | Roller Coaster cars |
 |
| 1 | Fun Castle |
 |
| 1 | Power unit |
 |
| 1 | Loading bay | |
| 1 | Red track |
 |
| 1 | Yellow track |
 |
| 1 | Blue track |
 |
| 1 | Bridge |
 |
| 1 | Donald gate |
 |
| 1 | Mickey sign |
 |
| 1 | Goofy sign |
 |
| 3 | Flags |
 |
This later KMart set has plastic wheeled roller coaster cars with Mickey, Donald, and Goofy.
The titular "Fun Castle" forms the lift hill of the ride and has cardboard graphics pasted on either side. The track turns around to go through the tunnel in the castle. The base of the hill holds the batteries, motor, and drive system for the lift conveyor. It seems that most of these toys have reached the age where the belts that form the lift conveyor have perished.
The track is made up of three sections. A bridge holds up the later portion of the track.
Mickey and Goofy billboard-style signs fit in over the track. Three flags, only one of which survives in my example, fit into holders on the side of the track. Donald is also included as the starting gate that fits into the lift hill base... the set also has a little white and red loading bay shed that fits over the batteries that is also missing from my set.
I have a slight suspicion... Illco directly copied a toy from Toy Town to make the Mickey Mouse Loop the Loop, and although it is not a direct copy I wonder if this set was not based on one of Toy Town's Speed Circuit toys at some stage... obviously there were plenty of downhill racing games previously, including several by Tomy, and this Illco one does not seem to wholly match any of them, but it does feel like perhaps someone at Illco bought a different racing toy and got a Hong Kong manufacturer to produce something similar