Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Big Trak

The zenith of electronic toys for 1979 was at Milton Bradley.

More 1979 Toyfair coverage all day.


11 comments:

Ian Sokoliwski said...

AWESOME!!!!!

My brother had some lame-ass ripoff of this, a truck that pulled a trailer full of cars, and had push-button controls on the top of the cab. But it wasn't programmable or anything like that - if you wanted to go forward, you pushed the 'forward' button, to turn you pushed the 'turn right' or whatever button...but it would just keep turning.

We always wanted this one, though...

Arkonbey said...

Did ANYONE ever have one of these? I mean we all saw the ads, but I never knew anyone who had one.

Looking back, I'm sort of glad I didn't get one. It didn't look like it had much play-ability without batteries.

Ian: Probably from Radio Shack. I had a remote-control F1 that was made so it could only turn if you backed up; otherwise, it just went straight.

Anonymous said...

I wanted one so it would bring me snacks from the kitchen. Never got one, though.

FilmFather said...

My friend had one of these. I thought I was hot stuff programming, like, 7 moves in a row in this thing. The best I could do was have it roll up to my friend's grandfather, spin, pretend to shoot him, then roll away. Looking back, the guy must have had the patience of Job waiting for this thing to approach him so he could play along (Big Traks weren't known for their breakneck speed).

chunky B said...

I received the Big Trak that Christmas and later around February I received the Transport. It was probably the best non-licensed toy out. That thing could roll over everything indoor and out.

The programming fad later produced a smaller Black Corvette that I received the next Christmas, about a third the size of this monster though and not as cool as the Big Trak.

I still have the round cover from the top of the Trak, wish I still had the rest of it! :)

rob! said...

WOW! Blast from the past--I actually did have one of these!

It was slow and noisy, and I eventually went back to playing with my Star Wars figures.

Anonymous said...

I had one of these. I remember I got the Big Track for my birthday and got the trailer for Xmas. I never could get the trailer to work correctly and took the whole thing back to JCPenney.

Although, I did pick one up on Ebay las year. MB made a lot of great stuff back then.

krakit said...

I don't remember ever seeing
one with my own eyes, but I
wanted one badly. The programmable
course feature and its appearance
together make it so Awesome!

I'm surprised this hasn't had a
come back with even more features.

Joe Sherlock said...

I had one of these and it was AWESOME! The trailer mechanism did eventualy break, though. I used the motor and laserblast sounds when making various sci-fi adventure serials on my old cassette tape recorder!

Unknown said...

Milton Bradley BIG TRACK
ive got one,an its a cool retro toy,still works great,with the trailer. cheers

Anonymous said...

I had one of these (with the Transport) when I was a kid. I think my dad enjoyed it even more than I did. One time I came home from a trip with my grandpa and my dad said he and a buddy had spent the entire weekend drinking and programming the Big Trak to make a loop of the entire house and stop within a few inches of where it started. That just blew my mind. I can't even imagine how many hours they spent doing that. Well, I guess I can. All weekend.

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