Kenner’s Smash-Up Derby is Redneckrageous
Someone at Kenner in the seventies must have thought that the best way to sell their Smash-Up Derby set was to appeal to the backwoods, redneck crowd. How else can we explain the awful voice over work and music in this old commercial? Toy destruction was an art, and with this set Kenner was working their way toward selling kids toys that could be destroyed and then reassembled.
I never had this, but I can imagine that I would have gotten bored really fast with putting those cars together; that looks like a lot of pieces to reconnect to the cars.
My brother and I used to have this, although in the UK it was called ”Stock Car Smash-Up.”
We must have played with it for literally… minutes before the novelty wore-off.
Reminds me of the Hot Wheels that had the built-in “flip” wreckage sides. You ram another car into the side and the door compartment would flip on a spring showing damage. You could never have enough of them.
Personally, I loved the era of meant-to-be-destroyed toys, despite it baffling parents like my mother…”why do you want a toy that’s already broken?!” I know they were much later than these cars, but Building Blasters were a lot of fun in their time, if short-lived.
http://www.morningtoast.com/2010/01/build-it-up-blow-it-up/