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Untitled
edithi, does anyone know where I can tires and parts for my motorific cars and trucks
Check ebay. The cars and sets seem to be plentiful and cheap, although the orignial tires have largely hardened by now.
I made two changes to this excellent page, and I hope you find them acceptable.
I had this set around 1968, along with several of the cars. The importation duty angle is interesting, and explains the marketing technique and why the motors were removable. Frankly taking apart the cars was half the fun.
The cars were designed to run off the track as well as on. The slot car pin could be removed, and the car run on a hard floor surface (lineoleum). The front wheels were steerable into one of three positions, as I recall (left, center, right) so you could run the car on the floor, for example, in the left position, and it would go in a circle. Or sraight, it would go until it hit a wall or fell down the stairs.
By the way, these pins easily got lost, and from the eBay listings I have read, having the pin is a big deal to collectors.
I changed the listing to reflect the off-track operation. Also, I never had a computer motorific, but I changed one word in that as well, as it implied that standard motorifics were not capable of off-track operation.
The cars were fairly well detailed. I recall owning the Ford wagon and Jaguar.
The hazard track was sold as the "Motorific Torture Track" and the ad campaign had the chant:
"MOTORIFIC TORTURE TRACK!" "MOTORIFIC TORTURE TRACK!"
The "Torture" consisted of a section of track that made a series of sharp esses, which the cars would often get stuck in. There was also a "jump" that the cars could go off. The car did less than jump than merely fall off the end of the ramp and continue on its way, after the guide pin fell into a widened area. The "brick wall" hazard would hinge into three pieces when struck. As battery power ran low (2 AA batteries as I recall) the cars would run slower and have more trouble negotiating these hazards. Petitioning parents for new batteries was always an issue back in those days ("but I just bought you new batteries!")
I seem to recall that the motors could be installed backwards and make the car go backwards, but I may be imagining this. Perhaps some collector can illuminate more on this point.
They also sold a companion BOATING set called BOATERIFIC or "Motorific Boats". Like motorific, the hulls (chassis) were the same, but the tops were interchangable and motors removable. So with a snap, you could covert "tugboat" to "cabin cruiser". Again, these were highly detailed and actually floated and ran in the water.
The rudder could be set at any angle, so the boat would travel in a circle or go straght. An interesting feature was the bilge pump, which solved the problem of the shaft seal. The motor drove a small bilge pump in addition to the propeller. The shaft had no real seal, so the boat leaked. The bilge pump expelled this water through a small tube out the stern. This was an interesting solution to the shaft seal problem, as a tight shaft seal would probably have been too expensive at that time, and also provided too much resistance to the underpowered motor.
We used to turn these boats on and then throw them as far as possible into a local pond. They would submerge and then bob to the surface, with the bilge pump struggling to keep the boat afloat. Eventually, they would make their way to shore. One day, I threw "sport fisherman" out in the middle of the pond. It came up to the surface, but clearly had taken on too much water. It sank stern first, the tiny bilge pump heroically struggling to keep the boat afloat. It was touch and go for several minutes, and at one time, it seemed that perhaps the boat would bail itself out and come back to shore once again. It very, very slowly went down until all I saw of it was the bow rail going under. That was the last I saw of it.
This must have happened to a lot of boaterifics, as the motorific cars seem to be plentiful on eBay and cheap ($10), while the boaterifics are relatively expensive ($40) and harder to find.
The "steer-o-matic" lighthouse accessory could be used to steer the boats (via a string attached to the lighthouse).
Great page. Thanks for the trip down memory lane.
P.S. - the "fan site" link is dead, so I removed it. Apparently it was part of the "AOL HOMETOWN" web pages site, which AOL took down in 2008, permanently deleting thousands of websites. Nice move.