The old wish book. 1967

[mattb]

[mattb]

[mattb]

[chappyman66]

I still have my 1/24 set......but it has a flat turn on the long end, never had two banked turns.
Those were the days!

[slothead]

Anyone know where you can still get this stuff at those prices? I could go for a few of those Strombecker 1/32 scale cars and maybe a race set or two.

[chrisguyw]

There are always a ton of Strombecker 1/32 cars on epay,........some great deals, some, not so much, depending on the condition and chassis. They do make great looking cars with a bit of work,......and, are some of my favorite cars.

[bdsharp]

$45 in 1967 is about the same as $350 in 2020. Not cheap.

[SpeedyNH]

i used to love the Sears catalog; earlier, that was where my Christmas list came from.
i still like the Cox 2E with the Cuc chassis. but by 1967 i was building my own stuff. and didn't even look at the catalog any more.

[waaytoomuchintothis]

Okay, guys... are you interested enough for me to go dig through the old stuff in storage to copy pictures of the 1960 Lionel catalogue that has one of the first American slot car-ish things?

Really. Its over 105 degrees in there. Do you want to see it?

[slothead]

I'm not going to encourage you to risk heat stroke to post something, but if you do I will check it out.

[SpeedyNH]

yes, please, any and all. (maybe do it at night.)

[Nikolai Teslot]

The best Christmas of my youth was in 1967. My parents got the Sears Marx raceset, for my brother and I. It was huge. The cars that came with the set were fast. Later on we got some 1/32 Riggen rtr's . These would lap the Sears cars. When we moved , the track was left in the attic : ( I have loved slot cars ever since. Thanks Mom and Dad....

[mattb]

I had a big bunch of Marx track back in the 80's and into the 90's. I never had anything that nice as a kid, did the Aurora vibrators and a Strom 1/32 with the front motored cars that were useless., When I got back into this stuff in the 80's, I built a routed track, 3 1/2 lane centers. I somehow happened onto a Marx set and knew it was perfect if you wanted a home track for 1/24 cars. Back then there was only word of mouth for buying and selling old stuff and I ended up with 4-5 sets of track and had a big setup at home. I ran on this until the famous "Etoys blowout" of Carrera, After buying 10 Carrera sets and replacing the Marx with the even better Carrera, I was able to sell the Marx track for more than I paid for the Carrera sets.

That is another story, but I made a lot of money on the changeover and sold a lot of extra Carrera stuff and cars and kept mostly the track.

My final Marx track.

[Reegs]

When we moved , the track was left in the attic: ( I have loved slot cars ever since. Thanks Mom and Dad....

>sigh< Same deal here, but I was in the Navy when they moved (but I still tracked them down).

[RvE]

Very cool photos Matt. I too remember pouring over the Wish Books at Christmas to make my list. These catalogs had a pretty long run.....my kids were looking at Toy Catalogs (I think they were from Eaton's here in Canada) up to the late 90s. Great memories.
My first slot car track was Eldon Thrill Drivers with a jump and other stunt features. We used that track for about 15 years before it finally got given away to friends when we outgrew it.
Thanks for posting. RvE

[mattb]

Lionel was mentioned above. I'm not familiar with much of their stuff. I know they did a lot of HO stuff. Anybody familiar with their 1/32 offerings.

[bobl]

Lionel had a wide offering of 1/32 Scalextric sets, cars and accessories in the 1960 catalog. I have a copy in my archives. I will dig it out and post a few pages tomorrow if time allows.

[olskoolslotz]

Here's the slot car lineup from a 1966 Lionel catalog. I've had the 1/32 Ford Galaxie and Buick Riviera cars, they are not to scale and the chassis uses a pin guide and pickup shoes like an HO car. I worked at the Lionel Chesterfield plant 1998-2001 while manufacturing was still ongoing there and I was able to locate some of the original injection mold tooling for the 1/32 cars shown. I'm sure the tooling was sold for scrap during the 2001 liquidation.