fall inside a hole
Tomy Stunt Action Race/Stunt Car Race (1980)
First written August 6, 2024First released in 1980, Tomy released this friction-drive stunt truck racing toy in Japan as Off Road Buggy Stunt Action Race and in the United States at Kmart stores as Stunt Car Race in packaging reminiscent of the original Big Loader packaging.
Stunt Action Race
The original Japanese set Off Road Buggy Stunt Action Race (オフロードバギー スタントアクションレース) was released in 1980 and other than the packaging and the sticker on the mountain base it is basically identical to the export version shown below. A video of this version of the set in action can be seen here.
Stunt Car Race Set
Tomy exported the set as the Stunt Car Race Set for Kmart stores in the United States
This box does not have any indication of production period, but it presumably appeared some time after the Japanese release.
Set contents| Quantity |
Item |
Photo |
|---|---|---|
| 3 | Trucks |
 |
| 1 | Mountain tunnel |
 |
| 1 | "B" track |
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| 1 | "C" track |
 |
| 1 | "D" track |
 |
| 1 | "E" track |
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| 1 | "F" track |
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| 1 | "G" track |
 |
| 1 | "H" track |
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| 1 | Drop track |
 |
| 4 | Rocks |
 |
| 3 | Cactus |
 |
The three different trucks have different stickers but mostly share a tooling. The trucks have friction-drive chassis with flywheels inside that store power and enable the car to run around before reaching the tunnel again where a series of rollers shoot them off forward again. The rear wheels have rubber tires as well as cogs integrated into their hubs which run against some racked portions of the track.
Sticking out of the right side of the trucks are little flippers that hit the different car's respective lap counters. Each car has a white guide pin hanging out the front and small molded features that flip the car up on different parts of the track.
The mountain in this set has a spring-loaded set of rollers that build up speed as the little trucks pass through the tunnel. The toothed roof racks help the trucks get traction against the rollers and build up speed, spinning up their flywheels before sending them around the course.
The set has two switches that make the cars change direction automatically. The first one (on the "G" section) occurs right after the launch tunnel. This switch has a little ratchet underneath that further mixes up the operation - the main portion of the switch itself flips the decider back and forth with every car, but the ratchet and the way it sticks out into the right pathway (which leads to the second switch) causes the decider to flip back to point in the same direction approximately every other time a car takes that path. The ratchet is not sprung in any way so it does not perfectly advance properly, but the switch usually causes a pattern of right-left-right-right-left.
The second switch is built into the hill section and simply switches back and forth.
Different parts of the track have sections that either have tread for the rubber tires or raised racks for the wheel's hubs to run against. The elevated sections with track droppers have mechanisms underneath that hold up a car on top if a car is passing underneath.
The three different possible pathways do take different times to complete - the bottom path that starts with a wheelie takes the longest to traverse, but it gets right-of-way over both of the upper dropping sections. The rear path is the fastest but the middle path undercuts it and can potentially hold it up.
Little rock sections cover the supports for the upper trackway and three little cactii are included for scenery. The instructions suggest you could move these around to different places but the set includes four rock walls and four places to put them as well as three available slots for the cactii.
The American instructions show the Kmart connection. Like similar "games" with lap counters, players can choose a car to follow and keep track of who reaches some number of laps first.
I think the rubber car tires are slipping a little bit on my cars, and sometimes they do not make it back into the tunnel and pile up. I really like the way the cars all scuttle around and flip up on their wheels.