fall inside a hole

Mini Car Factory (1970)

First written April 22, 2024

The Child Guidance Mini Car Factory was an assembly-line style car production factory toy that allowed you to assemble different small plastic cars in different color combinations. The toy was produced in Japan by Tomy who also sold it there as オートファクトリー Auto Factory. The version shown here is the American version sold under the Child Guidance name by Questor, who bought the brand from Archer Plastics in 1967.

The top of the box of my example has been drawn over in pen, but I am not all that concerned as I did not pay particularly much. A nice example can be seen fresh in box here.

The Mini-Car Factory comes with three different car components - underbody and wheels, body, and roof - in three different colors (red, white, and blue). Two of each body component in each color were originally included. The factory building includes slots where you can stack the components up in any desired order and a conveyor belt running along the bottom of the assembly line will assemble the cars.

The controls along the bottom of the factory are mostly for show - a dial changes part and color combinations in a little window but the design of cars is decided when you load up the different component stacks. The dial indicator in the middle clicks when moved but serves no function. The on/off lever at the right side does actually turn on the motor for the conveyor belt.

The car chassis move down the line collecting the bottom body shells and cabs as they pass. A bell at the end of the line rings as cars roll off the line, aided by a ramp missing from my example. Cars roll off one after the other in true Motor City assembly line fashion - a tagline circa 1970 for the toy was "Your own little Detroit!"

The entire belt has degraded well past the point of functioning, and is no longer present - at some point I will have to investigate possible ways to replace it. The underside shows the motor that drives the belt, the pulleys the belt used to run over, and the bell at the exit of the assembly line. The rear of the factory is marked as a Child Guidance toy - based on how the Tomy-Child Guidance production worked for the Kiddie Land, Joy Ride train, and Amusement Park series worked, it seems likely Child Guidance designed the original toy and worked with Tomy to have them manufacture it, getting to market a version of it for sale in Japan. I believe these Japanese releases would also be marked Child Guidance as the Plarail Amusement Park accessories were.

I like these little cars and the various different combinations you can make with them.

The roofs are what really determine the front from rear - they fit in and over what becomes the bottom lip of the windshield on one side.

Some all-one-color cars from the same toolings were included with some 1970s Plarail trains and a flatbed was released that fit these cars. I do not believe this Plarail style can be taken apart, although the one pictured here is from the Mini-Car Factory set.

Around 1980 Tomy used this tooling to make a Hirake! Ponkikki version of the toy with parts to make six alternately designed cars. This version is redesigned to use a hand-crank for the conveyor belt rather than a motor and is covered in Ponkikkis designs. A complete example can be seen here.