This thread is dedicated to the truly expensive and totally cool toys that are out there. And I do mean
toys...not things like cars, televisions and A/V equipment. This may or may not be something that members want to contribute to but I thought that I would give it a shot.
I am kicking it off with a post on
digital slot car racing. When I was a kid (really young) I lived for a short time in Ventura, California. While I was there I got to see something that I've only seen one time since and that is
large scale slot car racing. This is where you would have a commercial location (a store front) with several large tracks where people could race against each other. There would be tournaments where people would compete for prizes and stuff. The tracks would be huge with multiple lanes...four, six and even eight lanes wide. You would supply your own car and your own speed controller which was a kind of pistol grip with a trigger hooked up to a variable potentiometer. You would set your car down on the track and connect your speed controller to the appropriate place and then, when given the signal, you were racing.
I remember getting a home slot car set for Christmas one year and it lasted quite a while. Well, until the cars were all shot and we (my brother and I) lost interest.
Slot car racing has now entered the digital age. You can now race multiple cars on only two lanes. This sounds unworkable but it isn't. Here is
a review of one brand of digital slot car racing track called
Scalextric. Better yet here are a few videos. The first video is a pretty good promotional one that explains (almost) everything that the track and cars can do. The second vid shows what can be done at home with a couple of hundred feet of track. This vid is pretty good because at one point the owner straps a very small camera to the top of a car giving you a first person perspective. Finally, there is a very elaborate track set up on a table (like a train set) with lots of scenery and stuff...
For additional vids you can click
here for the youtube search results for "Scalextric Digital." There are a lot of them.
I don't know if I'll ever get one of these sets or not. I mean, I like auto racing a lot (one of these days I'm going to visit the NASCAR track at Vegas for a "race experience" day) and this stuff has definitely got some nostalgic appeal for me since I saw it a lot for a while when I was a kid. But on the other hand it would suck up the space of an entire room in the house and mrs. trapeze would probably want to get my head examined for shelling out this kind of money. But...nevertheless it's fun to look at other people's set ups.
This Scalextric stuff is pretty cool with all that it can do, though. The computer stuff that can be done is amazing. Well, anyway...I am impressed.
So...that's my first entry into expensive toys. Feel free to play in this sandbox and add your own stuff* to it.
*Some suggestions: Pinball, R/C controlled stuff, Foosball tables...whatever toy that you might have enjoyed as a kid and can now buy a full sized super expensive version of today if you wanted to. Or maybe already have.