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Submitted by Rhea S
We’re at a loss for words here… Nobody in the office knows what this is or why it got good votes. Do you know what it is? Did you have one when you were a kid? Was it epic? Please tell us how epic it was, because we’re at a loss for words.
The video makes it look pretty cool though:
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I had one of these when I was a child in the 80s. It was a blast. They were commonly found at the roller skating rink too. My cousins and I used to fight over who got to ride on it first.
I had one when i was a kid, it was made to move by working the handles back and forth, quite a workout actually. But randomly flying down a hill was great fun too!
Yeah I had one too.. it was pretty fun. It was definitely a different in concept since indeed you had to use the handles to make it go. I didn’t have any hills to go down though, that might have been more fun.
I’m 15 and have 3! Still use em too! You can ride on your knees and push with one of your feet you go way faster and face first is way more epic way to crash!
Roller skating rink? Sounds safe and sane! We used them on sidewalks and streets and scraped up our fingers like crazy. The wild back-and-forth of the handlebars combined with slightly-uneven surfaces made for some spectacular knuckle-busting. Another Epic Win lost to the ages, just because some moms got upset about broken bones and streaks of blood and skin on the pavement. *sigh*
we used to play with these all the time in middle school for gym. they were really fun to play tag with :]
Yeah, the girl in the video is using it wrong…. You’re supposed to go forward by pulling back and forth with your arms. They were surprisingly fast considering they don’t look like they should go anywhere from doing that. Felt kinda silly but they were tons of fun. While it can definitely be pushed down a hill, this girl was misinformed
Well, one of those wouldn’t work someplace like south Florida, where it’s very flat. Could explain why I’ve never seen one.
It doesn’t look like very much fun unless you were with several others who had one.
Actually, they were self-propelled by working the handles back and forth, so you could go up hills, down hills, and very very fast. There’s still one of these at my parent’s house. It must be 20 years old, still works, and is still super awesome.
What they said..
yeah it can go uphill.
its actually a lot of fun to see who can get up the hill fastest.
Actually I grew up with these in south florida we had them in elementary school. And ours didn’t have handles we could basically only use your feet… It was fun none the less
From what I remember, shes riding it wrong. You’re supposed to put your feet on the metal bar at the front and through a combination of twisting your waist and pulling on the handles you will move forward. Trying that on a slope sounds kind of dangerous (plus, you could get the same effect by sitting on a skateboard.)
The local fitness center used to have a track around the playground specifically for roller racers
DD
True. But it’s more important that she’s having FUN with it than how she’s riding it. Besides, with that hill, she doesn’t really need to ride it the other way unless she wants more of a toboggan-style ride.
Think summertime sled riding. Think soapbox derby without the soapbox.
This was the ’sled’ for the kids who lived where it didn’t snow. It was also the ’sled’ for the kids who did live where it snowed (but you just can’t take the old Flexible Flyer out on the pavement in the middle of July).
It was skating/skateboarding for those of us who couldn’t keep our balance on the darn things.
If you lived where it was flat, you rigged up a tow rope and took turns using a bicycle to pull each other around, so it was also water skiing for those of us who didn’t live at the beach.
Too bad they don’t make them anymore.
why would you put it on a tow rope? you propelled yourself forward by moving the handlebars back and forth… it was SO much fun. They had a bunch of them at Six Flags Great America in Gurnee when I was younger.
I used to live near Gurnee and actually worked at Great America for 3 summers. I had a roller racer, but I never went to the park when they had the roller racers there.
Good times.
Except for when my cousin hit a crack in the sidewalk, flew over the handles, and broke her front tooth out of her mouth…
Why use a tow rope? Um….. because it was fun? You could get up to speed a lot faster that way, and you could slalom down the street (sans flags of course).
They had them at Six Flags Great Adventure (NJ), also. I was so upset when I got too tall to be allowed on them. Even someone as non-coordinated and non-athletic as I am could get them going pretty fast.
I remember Hersheypark had a bunch of these as well when I was little. My cousin & I used to go on these all the time and have races!
no way.. man im sorry i missed that i always wanted one of these closest ive gotten is riding my friends… wish i had been there when they had them at great adventure though
that’s where i rode them!
Or make the dog pull you.
They do still make them. Search roller racer scooter on Ebay and you can find them. I remember these at roller skating rinks. Lots of fun.
Oh, man, my elementary school had these. As a treat, we’d get to ride them during gym class. Kayla has it right: you put your feet on the metal bars, held onto the handles, and kind of pushed and pulled from side to side to go.
Yeah, the people in the video are showing it all wrong. You don’t need a hill – all you do is go back and forth with the handle bars to get some speed up. We used to play with these at the roller rink as if they were bumper cars. It was hard to get up a lot of speed because you had to build it up gradually and someone would always crash into you!
No slope was necessary, the thing was propelled by kid power!
They still had a rink with these in it the last time I was in the kids’ area of Six Flags St. Louis. My son had no idea what it was or how to use it.
I remember having these at the skate rink. I wanted one, but our town has chipped streets and brick sidewalks, so it probably wouldn’t have been any fun.
I remember these being the most frustrating things ever — maybe we were too tall for them, maybe we were just the most tragically uncoordinated kids ever, I don’t know. Could not pick up any kind of speed.
i just remember wanting it soooooooooooooo bad…but never got it
OH YEAH!!! My friend jenny had one back in the day and we would ride it in circles around her parents basement. and yeah its true, you wiggle handle bars side to sid in front of you and you magically pick up speed. good times and totally forgot about it until today… EPIC WIN!
I had one of these and i’m a child of the 90’s! You would just move the handle bars and it would move forward. These things were dangerous thou! I remember taking them to big hills and everyone would go home with bloody knees hahaha
Heh, I busted my chin open riding one of those. Yes, there were stitches.
I can’t believe that no one has commented yet on the way WE used to ride them. You would put one knee on the seat and then you would kick with your other leg. This would give you some serious speed, especially on a gym floor. I remember there was this kid at my church who put too much of his weight forward while doing this, which caused the rubber stoppers to catch the ground which, in turn, sent him over the handlebars and to the floor, knocking his two front teeth out! That was the end of that way of riding…
OMG… LOVED these things!!! The gym teacher called them turtles and we would race all over the gym. You’d just put your feet on those bars and rock back and forth. Bada-bing, bada-boom! Movement!!!
My three brothers and I had to share one. It. Was. AWESOME!!!
We would go outside and push each other down the street on it. Whenever we couldn’t go outside with it, we’d setup an obstacle course in the basement and see how fast we could push each other through it. I never did know the name of it.
Oh Ya! I think many people had these in PE class when they were little. I know I did, and they were super fun. Much better than crab soccer or dodgeball.
They still do have these in schools now-a-days, and I see a lot of kids still playing on my street with these.
We had one – and you were supposed to ride it on flat ground, but as soon as we figured out we could ride it down the steep part of the driveway, all was lost! I don’t think we ever rode it the “correct” way again! As I recall, it may have even had a warning label that you were supposed to ride it on a flat area!
By the time they came out, I was too big for them. Not too old. Too big. There was a weight limitation–I forget what it was–and I was beyond it.
man, I’m from England and i remember we had these at our primary school fair in the earlier this decade, but i never saw them advertised them on TV! You lot obviously donated your old ones to us!!! Yhe but they were epic, although they were pretty dangerous if i rememember rightly, lol!
I remember Hersey park used to have a little oval track full of these, and the local rinky dink amusement park had a huge open concrete area just for these that totally kicked ass.
I can’t believe that no one has commented yet on the way WE used to ride them. You would put one knee on the seat and then you would kick with your other leg. This would give you some serious speed, especially on a gym floor. I remember there was this kid at my church who put too much of his weight forward while doing this, which caused the rubber stoppers to catch the ground which, in turn, sent him over the handlebars and to the floor, knocking his two front teeth out! That was the end of that way of riding…
I had one of these! And I got seriously hurt on one!! haha
We used to ride it down the driveway, and we also used to put one knee on the seat and push off with our other leg behind us. I did it that way down the sidewalk once and went flying over the handlebars when I hit an uneven spot. I skinned my chin so bad I had to get stitches. But it was so worth it.
YES, i had one, and it was AWESOME. nothing like an awkward, dangerous ride-on toy! we had an unfinished basement in our house, and my parents used to let us ride these things down there. we had a blast. upon taking them outside, we learned why the manufacturer recommends you use in on level surfaces only though. heh. good times. i think the brad i had was a ‘whammo’ or something??
I think it ate my first post. Oh well. Anyhoo, I had one and I loooooved it. I like that the pic posted had wheels on the handles themselves. That would have been helpful, considering how scraped up my handles got there from rolling down a big hill. LOL.
Schools still use them because they are a good workout. And they are helpful for kids that need some physical therapy or extra coordination help.
The Six Flags near me had a “Looney Toons Land” with kiddie rides, and this one was the Speedy Gonzalez Raceway or something. Think bumper cars LITE.
I think I still have mine… hapiness ^_^
i mostly saw these in PE classes or summer day camp, etc. fun, but the thing i remember most is how freaking painful it was to push with your arms and get your fingers run over. would make many a kid cry and not ride one for a while. yay dangerous toys!
You could also tie a jump rope around the handel bars, get some one to run and pull you… then stop suddenly. ^^ Whip crackin’ finger snappin’ fun!!!
OMG!!! They had these at Six Flags Over Texas when I was a kid. In the kids section they had a circular race track set up where kids could get on these and race around. They were seriously awesome and lots of fun!
OMG!!! They had these at Six Flags Over Texas when I was a kid. In the kids section they had a circular race track set up where kids could get on these and race around. They were seriously awesome and lots of fun!
We used to race down the hill in my neighborhood with handfuls of gravel that we’d use to try to get the wheels to stop on our buddies Roller Racer. I still have scars from eating asphalt at close to twenty miles per hour.
But as others said, you didn’t need a hill, you could get em going pretty fast just by working the handlebars back and forth in a god rhythm, kinda like the RipSticks the kids are riding now.
This is almost what I was going to post verbatim. Thank you, J, for saving me the trouble!
I still love my roller racer
GOD I LOVED THOSE. We always played with them in my gym class. O:
Yes, when I was a kid our local amusement park had a “ride” that was just a flat area of pavement with twenty or so Roller Racers that you could ride around. Cheesy, but fun!
I can’t believe people didn’t know what this was. The school had them when my kids were young and I was doing open gym on Sundays. They were definitely the most sought-after gym equipment out there!
I still have mine! Two of them, perfect condition!!
My grade school had a bunch of these. They weren’t exactly the same type, but we used to play a version of basketball with them. It was really fun.
If I had an adult-sized one, I would ride it all the time.
My kindergarten had some all metal ones of these, I think I owned a plastic seated one. Agreed, it took a fair amount of effort to start from a dead stop, but once you got going…
I loved these things so much. We called them turtles in school. We would have days in gym where they’d set up gym mats as tunnels and make roadways and we’d spend the entire gym period riding around on them. So much fun.
we had one of these at my grandmother’s house. it was awesome. but the handles on ours were closer to the ground, if i remember right, so our fingers got all scraped up if you hit a rock or a crack in the sidewalk. don’t know how anyone rode them on gravel.
Im so glad Im not the only one who remembers them from Six Flags… my little brother (who is now in his mid 20s lol) swears Im crazy and they didnt have them there but they DID.
We played with these in gym class when I was in elementary school in the late 90’s and early 2000’s. We played… hockey… or something. I don’t care what it was we played. These things were just plain awesome.
my friend that lived at the bottom of a really steep hill had a roller racer. it was really fun! but you had to stop at the bottom of the hill since there was a fence- by using the heel of your shoes, which actually created a burning rubber smell. overall, roller racers are awesome!!
Those things are amazing!
Ohman. We had a ton of those in gym class at my elementary school. There’d be a whole mini race track and course you had to navigate, but they were so hard to steer, we just ended up running in to each other. xD Those things ROCKED!
My sister and I had these when we were little! We used to race around the kitchen on these. They were easy to control, and if you pulled hard left or right on the handle bars, you’d go in a circle, if I remember right. Ah, great fun!
I saw the picture, and I thought “Isn’t that one of the things you move the handles to make it go?” then I watched the video, and got all confused. After reading the comments, I realized I was right
I was too little (and we probably lived in too rural an area, paved roads but no sidewalks) for my parents to get me one when I was little, but my cousins had one, and it was so much fun to play on when we went visiting. I could never do it very well, I think I was too short. Or, my boy cousins would get impatent with my efforts and kick me off.
Im thirteen and i totally have one! except its green it dosent have wheeles on the front and its called the flying turtule. try attaching it to someones bike while there riding it.
Think street luge for kids.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOI6LLIzIDk
I remember seeing commercials for these and finally got to try one at a skate rink. It didn’t work as well as they showed in the commercial, but maybe mine was broken. does look like mad fun to go down a hill on one though
Oh man.. One of these is the reason I have porcelain veneers on my two front teeth now. I knocked a big hunk of my front teeth out riding on one of these things when I was a kid. Tried to avoid a stick and didn’t. But damn they were fun!
I had one of those when I was little. I used to ride it around the kitchen floor and down the hall (really chewed up the hardwood). It was fun, but my arms always got tired from having to move the bars back and forth to get it to moves. Although once you got going, it was a blash and worth the sore arms.
The reason they don’t make these any more is, sadly, the same reason my mother wouldn’t let me have one. They were wicked fast, hard to control and prone to crashing. @%@$# what a good time! The neighbors had one and we’d ride when mom wasn’t looking… right up until one of the neighbor kids broke her arm… then her mother got a clue and took it away like the lawn darts.
Oh man! I loved my roller racer as a kid in the 80’s!! I have such memories “racing” around on it. The best (or rather painful) experience in my life was when a friend tied it to his bike and then I sat on the roller racer … you can see where this is going. Needless to say I feel off and skinned my elbows and arms pretty bad. For the longest time I had little scars from it. Ah memories …
For those who have never tried one of these, you still can if you’re willing to shell out ~55 dollars:
http://www.amazon.com/Original-Flying-Turtle®-Multiple-Colors/dp/B0018DFAQW
i friggin LOVED the roller racer… except to use it the normal way, it would never really go fast enough. my sis and i used to kneel on ours and push with one leg, like you would on a scooter. then you could really get moving.
If you had the all plastic version from the 70s it was called the
WIGGLE WAGON!!!
We used to have those at my old Elementary School. I used to love them! There was a “Fitness Day” every year with Roller Racer races. I’ve never been athletic, but I usually would win the race on those things.
LOL! I remember these. I had one as a kid, but in gym class everyone used them. I remember when we all got in trouble for pushing the coach too fast, and she ended up crashing through the double doors and out of the gym. Right into the middle of the hallway while other classes were going on. That was freak’n hilarious!
I have one, it was my mom’s. I’d always heard them called “Flying Turtles,” though that’s just the brand name from mine. It takes work to get to where you can ride it well, but it’s fun once you do!
One of my elementary schools had these! We used them all the time! Once, we had an activity where in gym, the teacher made a giant driving course, and using these you had to go through it while obeying all traffic laws. Once you did, you got a drivers license. I got one.
I had one in the 80s and I loved it. I bought one for my son. The only ones I saw on the market were the “Flying Turtles” and mostly in green. Mine was red and I didn’t share it with my cousins because it was too awesome and they would have broken it.
Those were truly epic, only mine was called a “Flying Turtle” because it was green. When you got too big to sit on the tiny seat, you could lean on the seat with your knees and pull off some wicked tricks!
We had 4 and would spend HOURS on them in the basement with our cousins during the summer. We always fought over the green one.
Basically, you sit on the plastic seat, put your feet on each side of the handlebars and then rocked the handlebars back and forth. The motion would propel the “racer” forwards and to turn, you just stopped rocking and held in the direction you wanted. And you could really move on those things too! Or, at least it felt like it to an 8 year old.
I LOVED these when I was a kid (late 80’s-early 90’s). The girl in the video is definitely not fully maximising the propulsion power of the handlebars, since she’s using her hands to move forward. I suppose as long as she’s having fun.
The funny thing is, there’s a whole bunch of these in a mall near here (South Africa) and every time I walk by I try to remember what they’re called and I can’t (we always called them sit ‘n scoots).
I’ve been hoping they’d pop up here and they DID!
EPIC EPIC WIN.
OMG! These were the BEST! We had them in gym class in the 90’s in elementry school! Exept they were called turtles. We would play turtle tag and bumper-turtles! So much fun, and so easy to use, just move the handles!
OMG these things were awesome. I used to have one when I was a kid, and we played with them in my elementary school gym class. I was a fat kid and all the other kids went faster, but I didn’t care, I was a badass! Totally awesome.
That toy is lame; that video is lame and this post is lame. Come ON people.
Freakin awesome. You were supposed to turn handles side to side, you didn’t need a hill. We had one at my grandparent’s house in michigan. i wonder where it went…
I had one of these! I actually just found it recently in the barn. My dad took it away from me when I was a little kid after I flew over the handlebars and grated the skin off my entire face…
But it was totally still my favorite toy before that
I remember these, didn’t own one, but the daycare at my church growing up had several. They weren’t any worse than riding a bike or a skateboard (danger wise). On the ones I’m familiar with scraped up knuckles weren’t relay a danger (getting your sunday dress stuck in the gears that was different kind of ‘danger’ all together. The Wrath of Mom(tm) was always interesting.) I had a blast with them… though that could have had something to do with the chalked in ‘race course’ on the playground pavement. These were great!
Pic of me when I was little hoppin a ride on one of these things. So much awesomez!!! http://c2.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images01/74/l_66d6fd57a182d5d8d3874b31fe4936ad.jpg
Tag- I have no idea what your talking about. Even though there are no hills in South Florida, I used to ride this all the time. They had a bunch at my elementary school & we used to ride them across the basketball court. I do think that it would have been more fun with hills though….but, we could still have a good time on them with without the hills
I had totally forgotten about these. I LOVED going on them at Pirate Pete’s, Southsea. I have never seen them anywhere else. I want one now
My elementary school had dozens of these for P.E. class. They made us go through an obstacle course on those things. They’re fun for the first five minutes until you fall over and get a road burn.
I used to always ride these at the zoo… They are wicked fun and totally epic
i had one and busted my chin on it. Three stitches.
I had one too… my cousins and I used to hook a bungee cord to the front of the roller racer and to the back of a bicycle and pull each other down the street. Once I went around a corner on the bike too quickly and just slingshot-ed my cousin off to the side and into the grass. I nearly fell off the bike laughing!
We used to play with these at the local roller rink. You would race other people and the winner got free coupons to the snack booth. They were really fun!
My school had these in the gym. I was born in ‘85 so they even had them in the 90s when I was growing up! ;] My most memorable thought about this contraption was on Field Day, they would have these set up for races! All the kids who signed up for that competition would use these to sway down the gym to the finish line. It was great fun! ;]
GREATEST TOY EVAR!!! Loved this is the 80s! SO sorry to see it go! Uber-Fun!
These were super super fun until you hit a small curb then smash your face into the cement, chipping a tooth that would become the bane of my existence. That was the beginning of like 17 tooth repairs thanks to swimming pools, apples and tongue piercings over the course of my 25 years.
These were AWESOME!
I used to live next to some train tracks. There was a winding concrete bridge for pedestrians to cross over the tracks. I used to take my roller racer to the top of the bridge and zip down and around the twists and turns of this concrete bridge, which must have been a good 25-30 feet above ground. It wasn’t a steep incline, but the turns made it that much more exciting! I used to also use it as it was intended, but going downhill on a roller racer was INSANE!
These were great. You could FLY on these little things. I’d ride it again.
I remember these from elementary school (1990s)! We used to have races in gym class every so often when the teachers didn’t know what else to do with us! They were so much fun, and a really good work-out too!
LOL, we were just talking about these things at work the other day, and trying to explain to one of the younger employees how awesome they were. He wasn’t impressed, but my boss and I loved those things
OMG! YES I loooooved this. Every pull it behind a bike? We would do that in our concrete basement. Oh yeah it was dangerous but fuuun! I loved my roller racer. Absolutely epic.
Who doesn’t love sleigh riding? Ok, so it is a sleigh without snow.
We used these in gym class when I was in Elementary school. We used to have races across the gym class. We called them scooters though, and the only thing that trumped scooter day was parachute day!
Oh, man. I had one of these and loved it! I went with the kneeling riding style, and my friends and I would go down my grandparents’ handicap ramp. The trick was to turn before you got to the street without flying off… And then some jerk stole it. I cried for days. I always wanted to know what these actually were called.
My brother ans sister and I all had one, and we’d tear up our hardwood floors going in crazy circles around the dining room tables. We also had the perfect driveway for them which looped the house at a weird angle leading down to a gas station and a busy highway (so very safe) and we’d get some serious speed on the downhill parts. My brother flipped his and took all the skin off his face. Kids these days are missing out with their ridiculously safe, boring toys.
for sure!!! we had these in my gym class, and that was only about 10 years ago
I didn’t know it had a real name! My grandparents lived in North Dakota across from a school & my grandpa fixed one up that the school threw out. We brought it home to Minnesota & no one else had one here, which made it cool or lame depending on who you asked. We called it “The Turtle Thing” I guess we thought it looked like a turtle….I’d bet it’s still around at my parents house. TONS of fun!!!!
Hey didn’t the idea of the street luge come from this epic win?
Ah ha! These where amazing! The rope and bike ideas is great. We had a Great Dane growing up in Cali Suburbs. She loved to pull us around the block. Stear with your feet and hang on for dear life.
Besides it’s not really fun unless something gets scraped! I still have a scar on my foot from where I scraped the skin off on an EPIC wipeout!
We had them in gym class too, and we used to fight over them like crazy!
I didn’t know it had a real name either I think we called them “turtle racers” or “turtle scooters” tons of fun!
R u kidding I had one of these when I was a kid ..let me tell you I had many a scrapped knee , but hey I went back for more.
Hell yes! We had these in my gym class in grade school and they were tons of fun! You had to propel them by moving the handlebars back and forth. Fun for hours.
The same principle works in an equally unsafe fashion on what we in the warehouse call “pallet jacks”. They’re like a wheeled fork with a long handle. One foot on each fork and pull the handle side to side. Great adult sized fun!
They actually do make a scooter type thing like that–I’ve seen adults at the park on them–supposed to be for exercise!
These were totally my favorite gym toy as a kid. The elementary school gym teachers always kept them locked up though even though they’d bring out stilts and other dangerous toys. It felt like a conspiracy to keep the most fun toys away from us. Very lame.
I did get pretty good at stilt walking through the boys playing basketball though. ^_^
“Conservation of angular momentum”
Wiki it.
Google it.
They have grown-up things that use this principle. I think it is called “Trikke”?
at my school we had ones called “the turtle”, idk if that says anything to anyone, ot was probably just because they were green. such an epic win.
Er, I was born in the 80s.. maybe I missed this? Anyway it looks like something my Mother would have assumed I’d kill myself on. XD
xD awesome !
these were the pimped-out versions of the square gym rollers. they were “safer” and funner to steer. They came out in the 80s, but my school didn’t get them until the late 90’s… (when I was just barely small enough to play with them)
My church still has a closet full of them. We would pull them out for open gym nights. You can either run behind them and then leap onto them and ride on your knees, sit and have someone push you, sit and wiggle the handlebars back and forth until you make your own momentum, or link up as a giant chain and see how fast you can go before someone cracks the whip and gets a busted chin. It was awesome. The trickiest part was keeping your feet off the floor so you didn’t catapult yourself forward.
YEah ! I got this for my daughter about 1980 for her fourth birthday ! It was called The Turtle. She used it till she was about 12 then gave it away to neighborhood kids.
So sturty I could and did ride it myself !! My daughter is now in her thirties and I’m 63 ! Nope Wouldn’t dare try it now !!
Like many other commenter, I too managed to break my chin open on one of these. I’ve had a total of 3 injuries in my life thus far which required stitches to my chin, and the Roller Racer incident was the first.
Man these were great. Best when kneeled on and then use your feet to kick off with. Talk about cornering. We’d race around my grandparent’s basement, don’t know how many times we nearly took our heads off on the ping pong table.
Omg these things were great! How old are these people that don’t know what this is!?! It was a great excuse to injure yourself. As is scraping your knuckles wasn’t fun enough, you would just simply wipe out on concrete a lot of times. My cousin had this and a sort of hang glider between two trees, it is truly a miracle I’m alive lol.
There was this place in Houston called Fame City back in the 80s that had an entire upstairs room where many children could use this unsupervised. Hmm. One of these things is fun but with five or six around in a closed area, it becomes deadly bumper racers.
I remember when I was a kid there was a version of these without the handle part, it was just the red plastic seat triangle thing. My brother loved his. I should get him to get on this thing, he’d have a blast!
We had these in kindergarten. If you got it going just a bit you could move the handle bars left & right & keep it going.
yeah that girl is doing it wrong. how could anyone not know what these were, we even had them in school. a real workout out for your hips . and no matter what you did you would end up bleeding at the end of it.
We used these in elementary school PE. They were…. seriously fun. I honestly wish I had one now.
we never both those , we made them ourselves ! and its very funny thing to play with… i want to be a small boy again
I didnot own one, but had a friend who had some. We would fight over who would ride it! You are suppose to swing back and forth using your arms and body! I loved that thing!
They had them at Six Flags St. Louis too. It was called the “How Does it Go?” There were also incessant tv commercials for it that used the same tag line. You could buy them mail order. I guess it was supposed to be a mystery as to how it moved forward when you moved the handlebar back and forth. I was too old by that point. Born in ‘72, I have to say I never rode one. But it looked fun.
Imagine the amount of skin kids have lost over the years because of these things, awesome.
omg roller racers were the best! You grabbed the handlebars and went from side to side to make it go. Extra points for a big brother who pushed it while you sat there. My sister ate pavement on one, though, and still has a piece of eyebrow she has to shade in from the wreckage. But even after that, we still played with them
It was the summer equivalent of sledding! They would turn over pretty easily though, which resulted in a lot of scraped elbows, but all of the best outdoor activities resulted in boo boos!
YEAH! We totally had these in gym class. We called them “Turtles.”
I had one of these things, but the front wheels were farther apart, so you could get it going a lot faster with fewer cranks of the handle and it didn’t tip over as easily. It was great for tooling around the basement on rainy days, but scary as hell for going down hilly streets. You were literally an inch from the zooming pavement! Ahh, good times….
My neighbor had one. We played with it for years. Especially fun on hills.
OMG the Pittsburgh zoo had a small area dedicated to these things! They would make it into a make shift bumper car kind of idea where you move the front bar back and forth to gain enough momentum to move the cart and bash the crap out of the other kids.
EPIC EPIC EPIC toy! all of the students in my early nineties gym class would all fight over who rode them first, only to be skinned alive when they flipped over.
A precursor to the now popular and more safe “Plasma Car” toy.
Awesome! I always wanted one, but living in the country with a dirt driveway it would surely have been riding inside and ruining the hardwood floors
I used to be a speed demon on these things in Gym. We had the obligatory rubber floors and that allowed for easy riding and a “slightly” easier fall if you stopped to fast. But every time we got to use them in gym I’d be the one speeding around the gymnasium with gym teachers blowing the whistle at me XD
i still own one! it gets pulled out and ridden around the house occasionally, even by my 27 year old brother. great fun!!!