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Sears Highway Police-Chase (1972-1979)

First written April 30, 2024

In the 1970s the Sears company distributed two Highway Police Chase sets based on Tomy's Plahighway (プラハイウェイ) series of road and cars in the United States and Canada. Both sets feature a four-way cloverleaf-style interchange with a red car and a police cruiser speeding around the interchange trying to catch or evade one another. In Japan the Plahighway range featured a few different sets and other vehicles and accessories. The later smaller set was also sold in Canada by Sears as late as 1979 with a Spanish version sold by Geyper.

Highway Police-Chase (1972)

In 1972 an initial larger Highway Police-Chase set was released based roughly on the Japanese Plahighway インターチェンジセット or Interchange Set was released featuring a complete four-leaf-clover interchange with an operating toll booth and a police cruiser and red car to run around the interchange. The original Japanese version of the set included a yellow bus instead of the red car and had some alternately colored accessories.

Another major feature of this release is the wired remote control switches. These do not appear on the Plarail versions of the interchange sets and were taken off of the later version. These are actually a really cool feature and are explored in more detail below. This set has the Sears catalogue number 79-57047. The Canadian Simpsons-Sears information is also present. The side of the box mentions that both cars need two AA batteries, and I believe there was an earlier Plahighway chassis that used two AAs each, but I think the vast majority if not all of these Sears export sets used one of the later single AA type gearboxes.

Set contents

Quantity	Item	Photo
1	Red Nissan Bluebird
1	Nissan Bluebird Police Cruiser
4	Straight Road
4	Road Turnaround
2 pairs	Road Switches with Controls
2	Left Curve
2	Right Curve
6 pieces	Toll Booth
8	Risers
2	Curved Risers
4	Overhead Signs
4	Roadside signs (two of each type)
8	Streetlights

The cars in this set are both Nissan Bluebirds, the most common Plahighway vehicle. The two cars use the same chassis and body shell with the police cruiser having an additional red dome. The cars are nicely molded with separately fitted windshields and chromed bumpers and grills - actually, the windows and chrome are both the same piece, with part of the translucent plastic painted chrome. The police car in my copy of this set is missing one of its P.D. stickers.

The car license plates are marked Bluebird in Japanese, and there is Bluebird text on the trunk. The gearboxes in these earlier cars has a single intermediate axle forming two reductions with a large gear on the drive shaft that hangs low out of the underside of the car.

Road in these sets is blue with some treaded surfaces for the car wheels to dig into. In the later sets, some track has additional treading.

The road included in the set is enough to make a classic four-leaf-clover-style interchange with four on/off ramps that allow a car to eventually make its way around to any direction on either crossing road. The switches for the interchange come connected in pairs to small control boxes. Plastic tubing connects each controller to the bottom of the right-hand lane on each switch (the ones cars will actually be approaching when driving on the right side of the road) and a wire running through each tube connects a lever on the controller to the directional decider in the switch, allowing the control lever to actuate the switch lever like the brakes on a bike. Stickers identify which controls move which switches. As far as I know, this system was never used on any of the Japanese Plahighway releases.

Eight support risers sit at the eight regular track joints on the upper layer of the interchange. Another two curved risers support the end turnaround pieces. Molded lips help support the on and off ramps.

This larger set also includes a cool operating toll booth made up of several pieces. Switches in the middle of the median raise stoppers for the cars on either side of the toll booth. The original Japanese toll booth used a red base and yellow stoppers instead of the yellow and orange on the export version. The original color toll booth is actually shown in the 1972 Sears Wishbook, along with yellow streetlights and signposts as were also used on the Japanese domestic versions of this set.

The two switches on the base raise road stoppers that will stop a car that approaches the stopper from the booth side. Driving over a stopper that is raised from the outside of the base will cause it and its connected partner in the other lane to dip, releasing a car trapped by that stopper. The protruding buttons can also be depressed to release a trapped car. Hitting these stoppers at speed does seem to roughen up the little cars a little, and the police car in my copy of this set has a chipped front license plate from hitting the stopper over the decades.

The small accessories fit well and there are a decent number of them, including four thru traffic/down town exit signs that forever redirect drivers to exit right if they want to get downtown and two each of 100km/hr (at least I hope so, unless the highways used to be rated at 100mph in the 70s and nobody told me) and do not enter signs as well as eight of the classic Tomy streetlight. More about putting together the layout can be found below in the section about the 1975 version of this set, for which I have the instructions.

Part of the "police chase" aspect of the set is the police chase "game" which Sears outline in the instructions which is seemingly why the switches in the set were adapted for remote control. The idea of the game is that each player chooses a car and one controller and has control over two switches. Players use their controls to change the paths of the cars to try to cut off or gain ground on one another by diverting cars down different paths, having to react and change the directional levers quickly to try and catch one another. This adds a neat aspect to the set which can, of course, still be played with entirely independently.

Highway Police-Chase (1975)

Around 1975 a smaller Highway Police-Chase set without the toll booth or remote-control switches was released in the United States by Sears and Canada by Simpsons-Sears as late as 1979. Japanese Plahighway production concluded around 1974, so it is interesting that this set continued to be sold for another five years overseas. Its a little funny, you can tell the children's clothing and hair styles have changed as the decade progressed and the box now has a big minimum age rating right on the front.

The Sears number for this set is 49-57062. The box has newer Sears branding than the earlier "Toy Box" style from the earlier 70s.

Set contents

Quantity	Item	Photo
1	Red Nissan Bluebird
1	Nissan Bluebird Police Cruiser
4	Straight Road
4	Road Turnaround
4	Road Switches
2	Left Curve
2	Right Curve
8	Risers
2	Curved Risers
4	Overhead Signs
4	Roadside signs (two of each type)
8	Streetlights

Like the larger set, the two cars included are both Nissan Bluebirds, a red car and a cop car. The red car in my copy of this set is missing a front hubcap, although the cop car does have both of its stickers.

The gearboxes in these cars is different, with a covered top and additional gears in the geartrain. The contrate gear and the metal gear at the right end of the gearbox are pinned to the first axle and are driven by the motor, reducing again with the plastic gear on the second axle which has a free-spinning idler gear on the first shaft that transmits power to the now-smaller drive axle gear.

 

I had to remove one of the cars' gearboxes to replace a split 12 tooth gear on one of the drive axles. The drive gear sits between the two metal sides of the chassis so must be installed or removed with the shaft at least partially still in the gearbox housing. The wheels are press-fit and have rubber traction tires which do seem worn-out with age. A new set would probably get the cars running a little better up the hills.

Track in this newer set (on the right) has some additional added tread in the surface of some of the road sections. The curved sloped road pieces have a slightly different connection style as well as more tread and are now marked L and R underneath.

The switches in this set are derived from the earlier export switches that had the actuation lever on the right-hand lane and the remnants of the support structure remain. As far as I know, these molding marks were not present on Japanese-issue road as the toolings used were never adapted to have the controls added in the first place.

Although it does not have the toll booth, the set otherwise contains the complete highway intersection with four overhead signs, four roadside signs, and eight streetlights. Eight regular and two curved orange supports are also included.

I have the instructions for this set which suggest how to set it up as well as describe the game you can play with the set, although it does not work quite as well without the remote control feature.

The instructions suggest constructing the two "dogbones" of road and then elevate one using the orange risers, slipping the other underneath. Then the curved road and accessories are added.

The idea of the set is to quickly open or close the directional-decider levers in the switch tracks to make your car catch the other player's car. Each player controls two switches and tries to catch the opponent car on a curve or at a junction.

Although the cars are a little worn out and would probably benefit from some new tires, it is quite mesmerizing to watch them zip around the interchange.

As far as I am aware, the North American Sears and Spanish Geyper versions of these interchange sets are the only Plahighway export sets.