yes, that's right... slot car stuff at Toys R Us. Well, I thought it was a good deal, kind of... See, ever since Mattel came out with that goofy Battle Slam set, I've wanted one to scavenge for some of the cool track pieces. But there's no way I'm paying the retail of 60-70 bucks for a few pieces i may or may not use and all that toy Robot Wars crap. So I was in TRU today, looking for diecast, and I notice a red tag clearance table. Seems to be all stuff that was opened and returned defective or missing pieces or whatever. There sits a Battle Slam set, all taped shut on the side, with a sticker on it that says "Markdown-- $15.90--Red Car Doesn't Work." Meanwhile, they have unopened ones on clearance across the aisle for like $40. Heck, I don't care if the red car works, and I can probably fix it anyway. So I took home the defective set... it actually looks like someone brought back just the red car and had the store open another set and switch the car only. The rest of the stuff was still rubber banded together the way it came from Mattel. Oh, and the reason the red car doesn't work is that the bozo that bought it stripped the gears pretty well. Anyway, I started looking at the track... ouch. it looks like the pieces will fit with old Tyco, but to take them back apart, you have to flip the track over and pull the tabs from the bottom. There's no split in the top of the track to form the little press-tab. The cool stuff that has potential is the 4-way intersection, the jump track (now I need a General Lee--yeeeeehawww!) and the single-lane track, which there's quite a bit of. And the power pack looks beefy, it's bigger than a standard wallwart...

Don't have time to do anything with it tonight, and it may eventually all just end up in my big box of misfit Tyco track, but i hope to get a few good pieces out of it. Anyone else used track pieces from this set for "normal" slot cars?

--rick

ok, this is a little weird. I couldn't go to bed yet with this box of stuff waiting to be played with, so I set up a long oval in the kitchen with the jump track in one straight. I have about 10 Aurora Tjets and JLTOs sitting here, and not one of them can get across the jump and land in the wide-slot landing track section, except for one, and that one will do it pretty consistently...

can you guess which it is?

come on...

you know...

yep, it's a Charger. A lime green pullback Charger body on a stock Aurora chassis with RRR wheels. Almost as if it's aware that it's a long lost distant cousin of the General Lee....

weeeeird.

Now this has me thinking... Presumably, the magnet cars that come with this set work on the jump fairly consistently. Why won't Tjets do it? Does the inertia of the motor spinning in the chassis cause yaw when a Tjet gets air?

Bedtime. More engineering deep thoughts tomorrow...

--rick

Hey Rick, Congrats on the TRU - Battleslam find. I have been "stalking" these since they came out 2 years ago and what Im looking for are the cool gard rails with the lights attached to them. They used to be at e-toys for $19.99 Not sure what the T-Jets or XTs won't clear the jumps. Let me know if you want to unlaod those guard rails

Chet

TRU used to have some decent deals on Lifelike cars but over the past couple of years they don't seem to have much at all.

I pull apart Tyco and Tomy track by placing one hand on each side of the joint, folding my fingers under the track to grip it, then push my thumbs together to pull the track apart. Harder to describe than it is to do.

Rick,
Guess you'll have to paint her up in some HEMI Orange and get a set of GL Decals. LMK if you need a set, I have an extra set I'll shoot to you.
Dave

Huh?
Guard-rails with lights? I've never seen them before. Good find and a great price. You got me thinking about the jump since I plan to incorporate one into my lay-out. I guess I'll have to set up the kids' Screamin' stunt jam and run some tests.
Cheers....

hey Boss, they're not real lights... they just look like lights atop a chain link fence. I'm attaching a pic.

Chet, I'm gonna send you an email in a couple minutes...

Dave, you too...

--rick