Comments on: Epic Win: Roller Racer

By: melissa

melissa — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 05:21:27 +0000

i still own one! it gets pulled out and ridden around the house occasionally, even by my 27 year old brother. great fun!!!

By: Rerem

Rerem — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 06:41:33 +0000

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

By: Bob

Bob — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 07:27:35 +0000

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

By: DizzyEmili

DizzyEmili — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 21:33:17 +0000

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.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 07:20:57 +0000

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.

By: Stephen

Stephen — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 07:05:54 +0000

My neighbor had one. We played with it for years. Especially fun on hills.

By: Nymphaeas

Nymphaeas — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 18:30:41 +0000

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….

By: CatFace

CatFace — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 21:15:44 +0000

Or make the dog pull you.

By: Ela

Ela — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 15:26:01 +0000

YEAH! We totally had these in gym class. We called them “Turtles.”

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 04:52:10 +0000

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!

By: emily

emily — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 18:28:06 +0000

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

By: Rhys

Rhys — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 08:13:01 +0000

Imagine the amount of skin kids have lost over the years because of these things, awesome.

By: ms tree

ms tree — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 16:15:13 +0000

They actually do make a scooter type thing like that–I’ve seen adults at the park on them–supposed to be for exercise!

By: ms tree

ms tree — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 16:13:46 +0000

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.

By: Russ

Russ — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 07:08:25 +0000

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!

By: bagi

bagi — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 16:18:29 +0000

we never both those , we made them ourselves ! and its very funny thing to play with… i want to be a small boy again

By: Michael

Michael — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 08:43:53 +0000

We used these in elementary school PE. They were…. seriously fun. I honestly wish I had one now.

By: old school

old school — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 04:04:08 +0000

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.

By: TJ

TJ — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 18:12:50 +0000

We had these in kindergarten. If you got it going just a bit you could move the handle bars left & right & keep it going.

By: MarthaK

MarthaK — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 17:42:56 +0000

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!

By: Amanda

Amanda — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 05:45:57 +0000

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.

By: Stephanie

Stephanie — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 02:39:30 +0000

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.

By: RCote

RCote — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 00:13:44 +0000

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.

By: MrEricSir

MrEricSir — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 04:12:24 +0000

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.

By: Rick

Rick — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 21:25:01 +0000

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 !!

By: RB

RB — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 20:43:29 +0000

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.

By: Hime Takamura

Hime Takamura — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 19:23:42 +0000

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)

By: ct

ct — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 11:51:55 +0000

xD awesome !

By: EJ

EJ — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 15:54:56 +0000

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

By: Mgr. City

Mgr. City — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 15:24:07 +0000

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

By: Lizzle

Lizzle — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 16:14:18 +0000

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

By: gonzo

gonzo — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 13:24:30 +0000

that’s where i rode them!

By: khaos

khaos — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 05:53:24 +0000

This is almost what I was going to post verbatim. Thank you, J, for saving me the trouble!

I still love my roller racer

By: Max

Max — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 10:23:16 +0000

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.

By: Roller Racer

Roller Racer — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 20:09:42 +0000

“Conservation of angular momentum”

Wiki it.
Google it.
They have grown-up things that use this principle. I think it is called “Trikke”?

By: Cranberry

Cranberry — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 23:14:03 +0000

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. ^_^

By: Brad

Brad — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 21:54:21 +0000

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!

By: randomgirl

randomgirl — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 20:23:00 +0000

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.

By: barry

barry — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 05:35:24 +0000

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.

By: BB

BB — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 19:41:59 +0000

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!

By: cc

cc — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 03:08:24 +0000

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!

By: melody

melody — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 15:13:01 +0000

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.

By: Dumbnutt

Dumbnutt — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 23:38:24 +0000

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!

By: Kahlest

Kahlest — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 17:37:24 +0000

Hey didn’t the idea of the street luge come from this epic win?

By: Melons

Melons — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 16:03:28 +0000

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!!!!

By: Charlie

Charlie — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 07:08:10 +0000

for sure!!! we had these in my gym class, and that was only about 10 years ago

By: L337Rur0un1

L337Rur0un1 — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 06:23:51 +0000

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!

By: Joan

Joan — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 12:26:07 +0000

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.

By: Adrianna

Adrianna — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 05:43:54 +0000

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.

By: Carrie

Carrie — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 17:33:19 +0000

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!