These Are The Worst Car Toys Of All Time

“The Starsky and Hutch Gran Torino. Brought home to me in an open box, missing parts, and no instructions. Was a wired remote car, never moved under its own power. Where it came from or where it went, I’ll never know. But it disappoints me to this day.”

This should have been a great toy that you played with all day, every day. I’m sorry it didn’t live up to that hype.

Suggested by: Stig McStiggerson (Facebook)

“Toys are for adults too, you know.

“Anyway, my ‘adult’ toy was by sheer coincidence. When I bought my second GTI (MK5), the owner left a little toy in there for me, saying that he had gotten it with the vehicle when the dealer sold it to him (he was the first owner).

“Apparently, MK5s could come with this ‘GTI FAST RABBIT’ toy, as I found out later. I don’t see the appeal of this as a toy, because It’s not a car-related toy that you can do anything with. It’s just a marketing tool at best, but was definitely the worst ‘toy’ in my collection.”

You can be an adult and still be growing up, you know.

Suggested by: dacarguru

“The Tyco Turbo Hopper comes to mind. Worked well for around a week. Graduated to a Kyosho Optima Mid the next year. Much better.

“Had a green machine as a hand me down too, but I was too small to reach the pedals so never got the chance to ride it.”

Being too small to reach the pedals is heartbreaking to hear.

Suggested by: Mike Pavlic (Facebook)

“When you ask for an R/C car and get the one that only goes forward and reverse. No steering. Bonus if the reverse turns the wheels.”

It’s a little known fact that kids actually hate corners.

Suggested by: i86hotdogs

“Nikko F&F Tokyo Drift R/C cars. Supposed to be able to drift thanks to a set of harder tires, actually able to do nothing interesting given the fact they were just the same layout as any other toy R/C car, RWD with most of the weight on the rear.

“Upgraded some time later for a proper 4WD R/C drift car.”

They shouldn’t be allowed to show ads of RC cars doing fun things like drifting. It’s almost always impossible to recreate at home.

Suggested by: Adrien Svartasmetal (Facebook)

“When I was about nine or 10, I remember being asked by my Aunt Marie what I wanted for my birthday. I immediately replied ‘A slot car track.’

“What I received was some off-brand set that no one in my family had ever heard of, which consisted of eight pieces of track (to make an oval approx 3 feet x 1 foot) with one car and one controller. There was no banking or fencing on the curves, the controller was essentially an on/off switch and the transformer hummed loudly, got extremely hot and gave off a funny smell after about five minutes.

“The car (which kinda looked like a Studebaker Avanti) would fly off the track as soon as it approached a curve.

“And try as they might, my parents could never find compatible track or cars to add to the set. Even Aunt Marie couldn’t remember where she bought the track.

“I played with it for about an hour, put it back in the box and shoved it in the back of my closet. It was eventually sold at a yard sale for a buck to crush the joy out of someone else’s child.”

A heartbreak I’m all too familiar with. Sorry for your struggles.

Suggested by: earthbound-misfit-i

“Slot cars – they never seemed to work well, only in short spurts. R/C cars were also very hit and miss – I only had one that actually worked reasonably well and of course batteries were a huge issue back then because the old NiCad batteries were pretty much trash.”

Huge, if true.

Suggested by: QADude

“ANY of the ‘remote control’ cars they had in the 80's where the controller was connected to the car by a short a$$ wire, so you had to follow the car around to play with it.”

I forgot about these! I had a fire truck on a cable and got exhausted running around after it.

Suggested by: @maximusjohnson (Twitter)

“The Dukes of Hazzard board game. Check out how ‘fiendishly complicated’ the board layout is:

“I barely recall playing it with my sis’ and brothers. It was so lame, it got chucked to the back of the closet el-quicko. Nice images of Daisy and the Charger on the box — that’s about it — NOT ideal.”

Nothing captures the crazy action of this ‘80s classic quite like playing cards and die, am I right?

Suggested by: the1969dodgechargerfan

“The Claw RC car. It had ‘tires’ that were plastic that had claws poke out to climb over rough terrain.

“The commercials made it seem so legit and cool. Xmas came, got The Claw. Was beyond excited. Opened it up and realized the handheld control didn’t have any steering. It was simply on/off. So you have no control over where it went.

“Then you add to the fact one of the claws stopped working probably 10 minutes into playing with it, it was just a pile of junk. Bad design. Bad build quality. And highly misleading marketing. Worst toy I ever received.”

When will we get justice for all the kids TV ads that lied to us all when we were growing up?

Suggested by: Ry-Ry Gravey Train (Facebook)

“My beloved grandmother always got me the inferior Sears of pretty much anything I ever wanted as a toy.

“I once got a remote control car as a gift. It was a red Ferrari type car, this was the late 1970s. It’s range of motion was awful. It had a J range. Forward, reverse and reverse to the left. So, if you wanted to turn right you had to do a -270* turn. It ate batteries, like how I eat Tic Tacs, by the handful.”

Did you know you could buy houses from the Sears catalog? Hopefully they were more practical than this RC car.

Suggested by: radioout

“Any GoBots compared to Transformers. They were smaller and often fit inside walls or vents or prison pockets.”

Imagine the disappointment of opening up Cy-Kill or Spay-C instead of Optimus Prime or Bumblebee.

Suggested by: William Lin (Facebook)

“To say it was the worst is a stretch but the Ideal TCR (Total Control Racing) Slotless track car set that supposedly gave you the ability to pass other ‘slot’ cars was disappointing. It came with ‘jam cars’ that just moved slowly around the track circuit and a switch on your car control was supposed to let you change lanes to go around them or to pass the other car you might be racing with. In reality changing lanes only ever worked properly about 1 in 10 attempts. Most of the time the car would just come to a stop somewhere off either lane. Plus of course due to centrifugal force, you couldn’t change lanes in turns but that’s not exactly the way it was advertised.

“I mean it was really cool in principle and the cars looked neat but it just didn’t live up to expectations and a regular AFX set was really the way to go. I think this is what killed 10 year old me’s faith in any honesty in advertising.”

I’m not sure who thought removing the slot would fix slot cars, but it’s a bold move to make.

Suggested by: elgordo47

“SST Smash Up Derby. Only took about a week for the parts to disappear.”

Any kids toy with small parts that go missing easily should get in the sea.

Suggested by: Lonnie Rowe (Facebook)

“None! They all had their time and place, even a ‘bad’ one could bring joy when sacrificed to the stunt and demolition (there’s a firecracker size for anything bigger than a MicroMachine) gods.”

Sorry, mom.

Suggested by: citronc