When I was Super ~ Boy

[Super]

When I was Super ~ Boy...So Long Ago  


I was just 12 years old when I got my first Aurora HO Slot Car set and I loved it. For every holiday and birthdays from then on I would ask for another set. There was no Amazon or Ebay back then to buy used ones so I had to build a collection from new sets. Money was not at hand back then but I would save my allowance, $1.50 a week, to be able to buy additional cars. There was only one Hobby Shop that carried them and I would ride my bike 5 miles each way just to see what was available and what I wanted to save for. Fast forward a year and my sets had had grown very much. We had a Ping Pong table in the basement which had lost its interest in anyone playing so I ask my Dad if I could use it for my Slot Cars. After I got his permission, bless his heart, I saved up enough to buy sheets of 1/4" plywood to cover it. Before I attached the plywood I ran all my wiring from the controllers to the Transformer under it and permanently attach the 4 controllers to the plywood. All of the 4 Lanes of the Raceway are screwed down so there was no movement. The pictures really only show just one side which is the Raceway Landscaped side, the right side is more rural, Farm field like.

Forgive the blurry pictures but this was a time way before auto focus cameras. This wa a time when you bought film sold as either Black & White (cheaper) or color (expensive) and you could buy either 12 (cheaper) or 24 (expensive) pictures. You have to wait until you take all the pictures in the roll before you then took it to a Developer and after about 2 weeks get the developed pictures back. Only then will you see how your pictures turned out, blurry or clear. The camera I used was the easy to use (at that time) Pocket Instamatic Camera.

That’s a really cool raceway and the scenery looks pretty sophisticated for the efforts of a 12-13 year old kid! Most people under a certain age probably can’t fully appreciate the level of scrounging for information one had to do “back in the day” on subjects like scenery modeling, photography and what not.

[Super]

I know, if only there was an Internet back then with a You Tube, I would have been in heaven instead of going to the Hobby Store only to browse and thumb through magazines dreaming of what I could buy if I had any money...which I almost never did....a different time for sure.

Now that I have been reminiscing about these...I many look into replicating the things from my past and starting another collection. Wonder if those buildings and grandstands are still around? I also wonger if the controllers I had are still attainable. They weren't hand held trigger grips, they were a little square dashboard with a steering wheel on it that could be screwed down. By turning the steering wheel either sped up the car or slowed it down. Pistol controllers didn't come out until long after I was done playing with slot cars. I Did buy a set when my daughter was young that had pistol controllers and I much preferred the old way.

My most disappointing picture I got back was the one with tan Mustang at the Starting tower as I pulled some cotton around the rear slicks to simulate smoking tires. It looked so cool in real life and I was proud of the way it looked. Was hearbroken to see the blurry picture but I didn't have any more money to buy a roll of film let alone have to pay for developing it with another chance that it wouldn't turn out. Oh how I wish we had cameras back then where you could instantly see the picture and take as many as you want to get the right one.

I never knew there was Aurora HO scale cars, I suppose that's the equivalent of Scalextrix in the UK (now owned by Hornby and still going strong). Here in the UK when I was in my teens the only Aurora I ever saw was the AFX cars (similar to Micro Scalextric these days), I loved those and thought them way better than Scalextrix as they hugged the road better, could achieve much higher speeds and had way more detail than their bigger cousins. I even used to disassemble them, polish the armatures etc... and carefully oil the cogs and gears to make them run smoother, faster (and slower) and almost silently round the track.

Unfortunately I no longer have any of the sets as such, although I think there is some track in the loft, but I do have quite a few cars as I remember buying a whole bunch when they were on clearance in Beatties (a long disappeared model chain in the UK).

You do see the odd set appear on eBay here, but nowhere near as many as you'd have thought available...

very, very cool photos, super! not only did you have skills as a model builder, but you also had a foresight to photograph your creation. i am willing to bet there were a number of modellers from your generation that never dreamed of, or could really afford, taking these kinds of photos.

i admit to never getting into slot car sets. my brother had one, but it was a gimmick one from tyco in the 80s, and i dont recall us ever playing with it more than once. we appeared to prefer action figures like the small g i joes and mutant ninja turles.

[Super]

@Nigels

LOL...I have never heard about Scalextrix before either. I can't tell from their web page what scale they are. Looks to be bigger than the Auroras. It looks like the track contacts for the Scalextrix are narrowly spaced on either side of the pin whereas the Aurora/AFX/Tycos contacts were wheel width apart, I wonder if that has anything to do with hugging the road better and have higher speeds.


@Sunhuntin

I never thought of these pictures as memorializing my youth but you are right. I only wish I had taken more that came out better. I did take many more but most of them didn't develop well and were tossed.

What I remember things as is that Tyco and AFX sets came after Auroras, at least that is what I think. I also remember that when Tyco and AFX came upon the scene later that they were like you say, with gimmicks like 360 degree loops, jumps wall climbers and such that I was never interested in but by then I had out grown slot racing. Probably started a new Hobby...Girls   I guess you could say that the Tyco's and AFX sets were the Trackmaster II/Revolution of the HO slots at the time.

Super - the main reason for the Aurora AFX hugging the track so well was strategic placing of the motor magnets above the metal strips in the track and the extension of the magnets out of the bottom of the chassis. There used to be two different style of motors a round disc type armature with magnets round the edge and a more normal can type arrangement without the can. The latter were attracted to the track so well they could literally run on it upside down lol!

[Super]

I do remember doing repairs on the Auroras as they were very interesting to a young Lad like myself. I remember the little tiny round brushes having to be replaced a lot of times and sometimes the flat copper track contacts that would wear down eventually. I had saved up and bought, ( what was a new invention for that era) a 12 clear plastic drawer organizer like the ones so easily found today in Workshops for nuts and bolts. I loved to be very organized even at a young age and this was used to keep all my parts for the cars. Of course it was.t made out of all plastic like nowadays but had metal sides. And you can believe it or not...I still have that same drawer unit today only its on my workbench with...you guessed it...nuts and bolts lol.