Down From The Attic

Watch my video review here! https://youtu.be/rG4JE2bXMq4

Welcome to Down From The Attic where I go up into my attic, rummage around and find something fun, interesting or cool to show you. 

The Incredible Crash Dummies were some of the best toys that I ever owned, hence why I held onto them. The line of toys were first introduced by Tyco in 1990, with the idea that it would help to promote road safety and encourage children to buckle their seat belts, and reading into this, the toys were launched with input from the America Nation Highway Traffic Safety Administration. I remember seeing adverts on the TV at the time with Slick and Spin driving wildly, eyes off the road, giving a thumbs up to the camera and saying “don’t be a dummy, buckle your seat belt!” “and leave the crashing to us”. Well, I might have buckled my seat belt, but I, and any fortunate kids who owned these fantastic toys, certainly didn’t leave the crashing to them…

It was my 6th birthday, and I remember going to the Toys R Us and picking out the crash cab the weekend before my birthday. The bright day glow orange box just leaped off the shelf and looking at the art work and pictures I was instantly entranced. “A car that you can smash up and put back together?!” My tiny mind was blown away by this. My birthday landed on a school day and I was so excited that to get home and get that thing out of the box that I made myself sick to get out of school, yes, Mrs McGrath if you’re watching, I did that on purpose.

The toys themselves are unlike any other I’ve seen, they’re designed to break, to fall apart and pop apart. Most of the figures have one or two buttons on their chests, the one button ones would have some comic effect, like Spare Tyre who’s eyes bug out of his head. The two button dummies, these were by far my favourite as pushing these two buttons would result in the limbs and head flying off. Inside the torso are two springs that hold clips in tension, and the pegs on the neck, shoulders and hips of the dummies appendages would click in. 

Unfortunately I no longer have the crash cab, but it was a recolour of one of the standard crash cars. These again were designed to break, the bonnet would crumple, the wheel pop off, the windshield flies out, the whole roof can come loose too! The interior of the car has some great play features too. As mentioned before, the all important seat belts. Unfortunately, 27 years hasn’t been kind on the rubber and these can get brittle. The fasteners can also get broken too being as thin as they are. Intact belts really do make a difference to crash, the dummies generally come out of the experience unscathed. A working airbag is included too though it is pot luck if it forces the steering wheel cap off. Being a passenger in this car would be awful as the passenger seat is spring loaded, that’s right, it throws the dummy right through the windshield! Put your dummies in the car, seatbelt on?….off, they’re dummies, they can handle it.

The beauty of these toys is that no two crashes are ever going to be alike, car parts and body parts are going to be thrown all over and to clean up, just click everything back in place and viola, good as new.

The Incredible crash dummies line didn’t just stop with the one car, they had a massive range of vehicles. My personal favourite was the F1 race car, like the crash cars the wheels would pop off but it was spring loaded to hinge in half, looking like it’s been bent, the steering wheel was also spring loaded to slam into the dummies chest buttons in an explosion of limbs and body parts, fantastic stuff!

The bike was also a favourite, the side car was assembled in a clam shell way and would detach from the bike at the point of impact. Spring loaded seats again would fling the driver from his perch, a lot of times leaving his arms holding onto the handle bars, I used to find this particularly amusing. 

Bull’s Truck has an interesting feature in that after travelling a certain distance or speed, the rear axel, which is again spring loaded, unlatches itself sending the car hurtling and tumbling through the air. 

The crash plane had a cargo bay in the bottom that could fit a dummy in, with a non working parachute pack, and you could drop them to their doom. When crashed, the engine retracts, the yolk stick crushes into the body buttons and the wings fall off. This toy definitely saw the most abuse as a kid, I know at least once I threw it out of my bedroom window to see it smash on the patio below. 

A few vehicles that came out that I have lost over the years or never owned were the crash lawmower, the engine would pop out and the seat spring forward, this was definitely one of my least used sets. The dune buggy didn’t have any real crash functions to it and to me, as a kid, that didn’t interest me. I wanted to see wheels and doors flying off everywhere! There was also the baby buggy which again didn’t have any crash features and was really the only way of getting the crash baby. I doubt now that this would be approved, a toy where you put a baby in car and crash it. There was also the damage dog and hub cat (got to love that pun), crash animals that would flatten when hit. The icing on the cake? Tire tread marks over the back. I miss the 90s….

In addition to the vehicles, there were a number of non vehicular sets that came out. The first was the crash test centre which I would’ve absolutely loved to have owned as a kid. It featured a wall that could be crashed through as well as a spring loaded seat that would slam the dummy against a number of interchangeable accessories. 

Junkman was the nemesis of the crash dummies and junkbot’s crash cannon was another set that I owned, pop a dummy in the cannon, angle the barrel, pull the string and….no, yank the string hard, there we go. This was another weak set in my mind, and I didn’t care too much for the Junkman and the Junkbots, they didn’t fall apart like dummies, they were good figures sure, really inventive and used great use of car parts to shape them but they felt counter productive to the whole dummy and crash idea. 

I can’t really mention the crash dummy line without mentioning the TV special. I did some research for this episode, and from what I can find, it’s one of the first full length 3D animated features. The short came free with a crash dummy figure, on a VHS tape and let me tell you, I wore that tape out the number of times I watched it. It blew my mind to see something like that back then and surprisingly it holds up fairly well. Sure you could cynically view it as one big long toy commercial but it’s still humorous and it’s worth checking out to see the infancy of 3D animation. It did a lot to introduce new characters and vehicles to the franchise and flesh out the personalities of the figures, which to be fair, all look alike facially and are pretty interchangeable. 

The toys are not without their faults. A common and disheartening fault was for these white plastic pegs that hold the limbs to the torso to break from….lets say, less then gentle play. When crashing is the name of the game, to have a figure break and not be repairable was so disappointing, you can use bluetak to hold it in place, but it’s not the same. Another thing is springs becoming misaligned in the vehicles and features not working like they should but these occurrences are rare and easily fixed. 

Put simply, these toys are….incredible. There’s really been nothing like them before or since and I hope one day that they get remade. Despite being 25 years old, they're still hardy toys, and work just as well as they did when new. The fact you’re getting a different crash each and every time keeps it and interesting, and above anything else fun. I’m 32 and I can say that I had fun playing with these again. They bring back memories of scuffing skirting boards my dad had just painted, sending a car careening down the stairs just to see what happens. Vintage ones such as these are getting pricier and pricier on the second hand market, especially with the boxes. If you have any still, dust them off and get them crashed.