26 replies to this topic

[Cheater]

Here's a recently-posted YouTube video that is a rather slick and professional production which attempts to assess at the slot car phenomenon largely from a corporate perspective. Unfortunately there's a lot of misinformation and an opinion that the HO part of the hobby drove the other scales and the commercial raceway side, a view I don't believe is accurate to any great extent.

The photographs used in the video strike me as being assembled by an intern knowing nothing about slot cars who was given the task of illustrating a previously-written script.

An interesting aside that speaks volumes is the fact that this video has racked up 8.5K views in just one day.
 

For some reason, I am unable to embed this video, so you'll need to click on the link to watch it.

The Slot Car Mania: How America’s Fastest Hobby Raced to Its End?

[Martin]

I do dislike this trend of voice over random photos that make no sense. Unless of course you do not know what you are looking at.

[MrFlippant]

Agreed. I watched the whole thing at double-speed to get through it faster. That it was created by AI was immediate from the start, but I also get the feeling that it was actyally created by AI. Meaning, someone went to whatever AI tool they thought was appropriate and put in this prompt: "Create a 45 minute long, fully narrated, slideshow video of the history of slot cars." And just let it go to town.

 

I don't know specific history stuff enough to say for sure, but after five years of chat with people who do know, I feel like I'd have already heard about a lot of that. The parent company of Scalextric had purchased AFX/Aurora? Really? There was so much that is believable, but also that I'd never heard or read before that it feels like the entire thing was written by the AI, without much actual fact checking. Like, if you came back with a correction, it would say, "You're right, of course. I'll correct it." But whoever asked for it to be created just assumed everything was 100% accurate.

 

Can anyone debunk any of the claims this video made? I think I'll bring it up on today's zoom chat. 

[Cheater]

I think the raceway numbers are inaccurate, as some of the numbers quoted are less than the number of raceway we had listed here in the Slotblog Raceway List at some of the times referenced.

Plus, without having any hard data to cite, I think at the peak there were way more than 3,000 raceways in the US.

And there was almost no HO presence in commercial raceways during the first three deacdes on the commercial raceway industry other than parts sales.

[MSwiss]

It definitely includes footage and dialog cribbed from other slot car videos I've witnessed recently with the onset of AI.

 

It is nice to spot a great shot of Buzzy.

[team burrito]

I saw this last night and it only focused on Aurora HO slot cars, not the whole community of slot car racing. nothing about home or commercial tracks - very boring.

[Bill Seitz]

We are being bombarded by all things AI which in every case I've seen are not factually accurate. Fake photos, fake news, fake videos, fake stories, fake everything. Unfortunately, some may believe all this fake stuff is true and get the wrong impression of our hobby and lots of other things as well.

[Steve Adkins]

Lacking in accuracy, but much better than nothing.

[Bill from NH]

Sounds like someone intended to tout the history of Aurora HO then mixed in a few facts and non-facts about commercial slot cars. That would be as inaccurate as combining today's 1/24 and 1/32 slot racing industries. Not very many commercial raceways in the '60s and '70s had an HO track also.

 

In '73 when I worked at Modelville Hobby part time, the owner Dick Cafarelli brought in an Auora tub track. We sold a few HO vehicles and track time. There were no scheduled HO races held nor was there any maintenance time spent repairing HO cars. I believe Peter Lentros owns that particular tub track today.

 

This video did provide some information about what Jim Russell did after selling Russkit, if it's true. Nabisco should have never bought Aurora, If they hadn't, it might still be on Long Island. Perhaps someday, someone will write a book on this topic using AI.

[Martin]

What do you guys see in this pic.      Did Escher design this one. 

 

[mickey thumbs]

I do dislike this trend of voice over random photos that make no sense. Unless of course you do not know what you are looking at.

 

Assign AI the task of making a documentary about slot car racing and of course it will utilize the techniques of the most successful modern documentary maker, Ken Burns. It worked for “The Civil War,” “Baseball,” and “Jazz.”

 

Not so much in this case.

[Bill from NH]

Martin, if that's the big track that was in the NYC area, I recall in a writeup that it had at least one extension built on it. I think it was built and designed by the track owner, whose name I forget. I doubt I still have the article about this track.

[MSwiss]

I'm pretty sure Martin is alluding to, as I thought to myself, that the track is some sort of AI fabrication. 

 

Along with apparently not being connected, there are 100+ people around track and no marshals. LOL.

[Phil Hackett]

There's another video out recently that is similar to this but it concentrates on 1/24 commercial tracks. It blamed competitive racing for the downfall of the boom-times in the 1960s. It also had a bunch of bad information.

[MSwiss]

Phil,

I just watched here at my favorite lunch spot, Taco Grill.

 

What bad information are you referring to?

 

That the raceway owner walked around with a soldering iron in his back pocket? Lol

 

While I don't have the time to watch all of the long one Cheater posted, I found this one short enough and insightful enough to sit through.

 

I found it entertaining with witty dialog and a lot of great pics like the couple below.

 

That said, I'm not sure what guys in suits punching a time clock had anything remotely to do with slot racing. Lol

 

As my bottom pic alludes to, it does morph into a Buzz-a-Rama video at the end with a few unnecessary pics.

 

I had to include that terrific pic of Mike Katz smiling like he just heard kitchen cleanser went on sale. IYKYK 

 

PS-expanding that top pic ofl the painted bodies on the wall, are those real? Along with the weird shapes and window designs, they don't appear to be on pegboard hooks. God help us with this AI stuff.

 

 

[Bill Seitz]

It seems like the overall theme of these videos is "Before It Vanished". That in itself is not accurate. Although slot cars are certainly not what they were in the 60's, they haven't vanished. The 3 scales we had then have been around continuously since and expanded with the addition of 1/43 with home sets and raceways. A simple web or Facebook search will find them, and I get search hits from Yelp and Trip Advisor. I know my wife was posting slot car raceways we visited to Trip Advisor.

 

I've recently completed my annual excursion across the US from Arizona to my wife's family in Virginia and back. We include a number of raceway stops so I can enjoy my hobby. This year it was 8 raceways, all but 1 of which I've visited previously. At one stop, I met a number of recent new participants. They weren't entirely new to the hobby having participated some years ago, but had only recently discovered there was a slot car raceway in their locale again. The interesting part is that this raceway is celebrating a fifth anniversary this year. It has a web page, an active Facebook page, and is listed in the Slotblog Raceway Directory. One of the new people said he'd been searching for slot car raceways for some time, and this makes me wonder where he'd been searching. He'd also heard about another raceway a few hours away, but his searching had not been able to find it either. Well, the raceway was in a suburb of the place he was looking, but again there's a web and Facebook page as well as a Slotblog listing. I filled him in. I got the distinct impression the search method was Yellow Pages. I gave up on that a long time ago.

 

I also visited Jim Honneycutt at his Magnetech Raceway again this year. It's always a pleasure to chat with him and to turn laps on an original Stan Engleman track. The raceway has been located in an older mall for 22 years, though initially it was downstairs next to the food court. Jim tells me that people come in regularly and tell him they didn't know there were slot cars and raceways anymore despite them being regular customers at the mall.

 

It seems as though slot cars have "vanished" simply because they're no longer in the main stream bombardment of our senses and most people really aren't looking that hard.

[Mr. M]

I always thought that when the fad transitioned from largely collectors, how many cars do you have, to competitive racing where the racing was based around pro cars of the era, that the interest of much of the initial crowd waned quickly. Most of the raceways tracks weren’t good enough, most of the casual racers skills were not up to the task, and the manufacturer’s were displaced and could not keep up. If there was adoption of classes similar to the Retro concept with controlled motors and chassis, the dropoff might have been less severe. Just a thought. Note that this is not pro racing killed the hobby, more that there were several factors that impacted an already over extended hobby industry.

[MSwiss]

I don't think it was the Pro's. I remember going to weekly race for "Pro cars" as a 14 year old and they

couldn't have been more helpful and encouraging.

 

I think the fad wore off, and coupled with a 1/24 commercial raceway being a bad business model,

the end was inevitable.

 

What didn't help was while I had limited exposure to different raceways as a 10-17 year old,(maybe 8)

I never spotted any evidence of them offering rental cars or birthday parties. How would a birthday party

even work back then? Were there any cars that could survive 8 year olds walling them at 12V ?

 

I know, without rental cars, birthday parties, manufacturing and mail order, I would never have been able

to stay open for 21 years.

 

I could offer blonde models to massage the weekly racer's shoulders between heats and their business

wouldn't be enough to pay Chicago area rent.

 

"Only blondes? Why no redheads?" LOL

 

The last line courtesy of ex-slot car philosopher and a friend I really miss, "Diamond" Jim Evans.

For those who remember him, he stopped by probably 6 or 7 years when he was in town.

I always hope to spot his name in some Florida race results. He was a terrific driver, and a lot of fun to be around.

[mickey thumbs]

We kick this topic around on a regular basis and even though no one asked, here is my take on it.

 

In the very early days the hobby was a winter basement hobby, building and racing 1/32 scale cars. Some guys got together and formed clubs and “commercial “ tracks were mostly small routed 1/32 tracks wedged into underutilized space in hobby shops. Most 1/24 racing in my part of the Midwest was drag racing using plastic model kit bodies and scratchbuilt chassis. A straight 55’ track with a short runoff ending in a surplus parachute didn’t take up a large footprint. The early slot car magazine articles were largely about 1/32 scale cars and appeared in model car magazines, not dedicated slot car mags.

Somewhere along the line the 1/24 commercial model that led to the 1/24 fad/boom period came along. As Mike Swiss and others have pointed out, the business model was seriously flawed and few survived the initial few years. Collapse of the boom is well documented.

 

On the other hand, largely because of the high cost of retail or commercial square footage, the hobby largely remained a 1/32 scale home and club hobby in the U.K. and Europe. I’m sure that cultural factors played a role as the Brits especially seem to favor club activities. So they remained immune to the boom and bust of 1/24 and continued along preserving 1/32 racing and the manufacturers that supported it. Those of us returning to the hobby after 50 years walked into a new Golden Age of 1/32 slot cars marked by improved injection molded bodies, highly sophisticated plastic chassis, and relatively reliable and consistent motors. The adoption of Tampo printing to create beautiful finishes for RTR cars was a big factor in luring in us old-timers and tempting kids to convince their parents that a racing set would be a great Christmas present when they saw a small demo digital track set up in a fancy toy store.

[pn6]

I watched it last night. Interesting facts that may or may not have been true. Certainly not encompassing the entire slot car history as the focus was definitely on HO scale.
 
Like many “club” type activities HO and 1/32 scale racing lived and still lives a healthy lifestyle at home mainly because of space needed.
 
Being involved in the hobby industry as a kid racing in the 60’s up to working at a commercial hobby shop/slot car track I can say the difficulty and decline of the commercial side is space. Space costs money. Commercial space costs big money.
 
True there are some commercial venues open today but the slot car track(s) are probably not the primary business in the building.
 
If there were thousands of tracks across the country then where are the tracks now? Trash, storage? Nowadays maybe places like warehouses or other indoor businesses with some extra square feet collecting dust could be used for a track. Maybe local businesses have some room where we could all enjoy some good old slot car playing.

Anyway, yeah, that AI stuff is really just a cobbled together bunch of info from who knows where. Is this what our kids are going to believe is true?

[Martin]

My theory is that if you know the subject well you will find AI will always be of-base. Try AI on another subject you personally know very well.
 
The first pic of that giant BS track should of been the first clue to what was to follow. More BS.

[Mark Onofri]

Mike, did my post get censored or didn't I send it?

[Cheater]

Mark,

 

There's no post of yours that shows in the removed or unapproved content folders.

So I think you probably didn't send it.

[pn6]

Is that 15 drivers? I'd hate to marshall that sucker...

[Mark Onofri]

Thanks, I didn't think that the following post would be too offensive:
 
I sincerely believe that it was the birth control pill that was the demise of not only slot car racing but several other things of that era.