[woodcote]

Hearing stories from way back in the 1990s, I understand the London Toy Fair was worth a visit to view most of the new slot car releases. These days it's pretty much only Scalextric and the vast space of the Olympia exhibition hall is crammed full of tens of thousands of toys from many hundreds of companies - it is an amazingly imaginative and diverse market, but also seriously competitive.

   

Hornby Hobbies had a good spread of new products from all their ranges on display, including full-size and Micro Scalextric tracks to play with...

       

The Scalextric team were rather proud - they had picked up a Toy Fair Hero award for the new Batman vs Joker Spark Plug set. The award is a big deal - only 25 are handed out each year, chosen from the thousands of new products unveiled at the event. These are the 25 new toys judged by an independent panel of retailers - along with input from the British Toy & Hobby Association - to be the most exciting, innovative and creative at the event...

   

As part of the award, Scalextric's Head of Brand - Martyn Weaver - had to take the set to the Toy Fair Demo Zone to be tested by a group of enthusiastic young people live on TV. The Spark Plug controller does take a little getting used to, but despite the Demo Zone crew trying out the set for the first time, they enjoyed themselves and gave the experience a big thumbs up.

         

Back on the Hornby stand, I grabbed a pic of one of the Camaros that got me a bit over-excited the other week. I also spotted another three-wheeler van in the new Corgi range...

         

Hornby also had an outlying booth for the new Bassett-Lowke Steampunk railway models. They grabbed my attention on the Hornby website and they looked a hundred times better in the flesh (as models usually do). On hand was Laurie, who starred as a leading light in Team Steampunk during the first series of the Great Model Railway Challenge on Channel 5 TV. Laurie and the team have played an important role in getting the range off the ground...

         

More to come...

[woodcote]

I had done a bit of research beforehand and there were a few more stands to visit in search of slot cars. The group that own Revell bought Carrera last year and although there were no Carrera products at the show, I had a good chat with the Revell guys and admired their new model kits. Then it was on to the huge Chinese toy company Maisto...

         

You might have seen these Maisto Tech R/C sets around in the run up to Christmas. They are 1/43 scale, cheap, cheerful and sort of what you expect from bargain basement slot car sets...

         

The big set actually comes with the track glued together and attached firmly to a cardboard baseboard (with optional legs) - avoiding all the inevitable set-up issues of a cheap set. The cars are Artin-ish and were suitably good fun round the figure-of-eight with a battery powerbase and thumb controllers. Of course, Maisto own the Polistil brand and the F1 cars have the Polistil logos on them - which was kind of interesting, given the recent discussion on the Slot.it / Policar thread.

But what was most interesting - especially for Leo - was this new set for 2020, including some neat off-road undulations...

         

The Polistil branding is for Italy (and other parts of Europe where the Polistil name is known). It'll be Maisto here, when it arrives. RRP is £49.99, but I've seen the small Maisto set - the Gran Turismo one - for £11.99 in the post-Christmas bargain bin at Robert Dyas. It would be rude not to grab one, I think...

That was it for slot cars, but the Hotwheels distributor had a new Crash Racers set. This system first appeared last year, developed by a couple of ex-Hot Wheels designers. It is a slotless track and the cars are charged up and then set free to run round the track for 20-30 seconds. The first set sold well in the US, but bombed here - it can be picked up quite cheap (here). The new set is smaller and has Nascar licensing, of sorts...

   

Another couple of things I liked very much...

         



Overall, there was an enormous amount of fab, cute, innovative and exciting stuff - and quite a bit that was fairly rubbish. Just as I was leaving, I had a quick demonstration of the Lego 'Hidden Side' augmented reality stuff and it is pretty cool (see here). AFX have already tried augmented reality with slot cars (in the US) - which didn't really work - but I can imagine someone else will give it a try somewhere down the line.

[Scuderia_Turini]

Good to see this on here, doesn't get much coverage in the general press/media. 
It will be interesting to see how sales of the Spark-Plug go - definitely a step forward in Scalextric modernisation. Old-schoolers like myself will be thinking its not for them - and they are correct, its for the portable device generation and might spark (pun intended!) interest in the younger generations. 
I will definitely buy one when they become available separately - so that I can let my great nephews and niece have a taste.  

I have not been attracted by the previously presented IROC Camaros but that red one is quite a looker.

Thanks yet again Andy. 

Leo

Edit: Andy was beavering away with the non-Scalextric stuff as I composed my post, so:
Great to see more 1:43 stuff, especially the non-racing set!

[rallyhub]

Hi Andy,

Many thanks for your report about the London Toy Fair.
Much appreciated.

rallyhub

[BAracer]

Seeing the products from a Chinese manufacturer does make me wonder if there will be any consolidation in the industry if they were to get their wallets out. 

Interesting that their product is a 'world brand' rather than something niche to China.

[Gareth]

Nice reporting Andy. I actually have an older version of the Hot Wheels battery powered cars in my shed. I found it in a Woodingdean charity shop about 6 years ago. Has a typical HO can motor in it and solid contact points where the pickups would be suggesting that's the charging point.