fall inside a hole
Playskool Alphabet Roadway (1989)
First written September 9, 2024The Playskool Alphabet Roadway is a configurable trackway toy with a small powered bus that navigates a track inset into 26 letter-shaped track pieces. The battery-powered bus (and potentially other components for these sets) were apparently manufactured in conjunction with Toybox of Japan, who also sold some Milton-Bradley games in Japan (Milton-Bradley owned Playskool when Hasbro acquired both in 1984). Similar to other puzzle-track type toys, hundreds of different combinations can be made by combining the pieces together. The sets also included trees, benches, signs, and flat figurines with stickers on them. It was released in the United States with a Sesame Street license around 1989, in a generic form with a multi-lingual box in 1989, and in an updated Sesame Street box in 1990.
Sesame Street Alphabet Roadway
Set contents| Quantity |
Item |
Photo |
|---|---|---|
| 1 |
Bus |
 |
| 26 | Letter track sections |
 |
| 6 | Sesame Street characters |
 |
| 6 | Street signs (three of each type) |
 |
| 3 | Benches |
 |
| 6 | Trees |
 |
The little yellow school bus is powered by one AA battery and has stickers of Twiddlebugs driving the bus and looking out the windows. The power switch pokes out the rear and has a green rubber cover.
The bus was produced by Toybox and is made in Macau. Like on the Big Loader chassis, a swinging metal bar allows a pin to hang down and ride inside the groove in the alphabet tracks. It can also be swung up to let the bus roll around on other flat surfaces. Inside the bus is a little multistage gearbox similar to those on other Tomy and Toybox toys.
One of the gears on the second shaft of my example had split and was freespinning, so I replaced it. I also had to neutralize and clean up some old battery acid to get the motor running again.
The letter roadway sections have a variety of different track layouts in them, following some portion of the shape with most having multiple connection points and a few having turnaround, branching paths, or multiple tracks on a single letter. Many pieces have one or more recessed holes for the accessories to slot into.
Raised posts near the groove will lift one side of the bus up off the track, prompting the other powered wheel to be responsible for all tractive effort, letting the bus take tighter corners. Some sections like the Q lift the bus slightly so it can cross a gap. This is a neat little trick, but it seems like the rubber tires on these busses are breaking down and don't provide the same traction they once did.
The box says you can make hundreds of different tracks, but I think that this might be a safe underestimate and in reality you could make several thousand unique variations, particularly if you do not care about properly connecting the sections with multiple tracks and certainly if you do not use every piece.