Remember Hot Wheels tracks? 3DBotmaker sure does.
He had a little cottage business making accessories for them (timers, starting gates, etc.). He started making videos of races to promote them, and eventually the videos took off. It’s like pinewood derby, but there are turns, the cars aren’t held to one lane for most of the track, and it’s 1:64 die cast cars instead of custom cars carved out of pine. Since there are turns, the heaviest car does not always win. Plus he uses different track than what came with most Hot Wheels sets. the track is wide enough for more than one car. So they get in front of each other, wreck into each other and complete mayhem usually rules the day.
He runs several different series, but the one I’m the most in love with is the King of the Mountain series. A lot of the series are just using 3DBotmaker’s cars. In KotM, folks customize their own cars and send them in to be raced. There are weight limits, etc in this series. It’s certainly a game where chance rules, but there is a bit of skill in preparing the cars (weigh, wheel prep, etc.), so it almost verges on sport.
I’m halfway tempted to put this in Cafe Society, though. Half of the allure of this series is the production. He builds huge, detailed tracks in his garage that look more like what you’d expect from a very devoted model train set up. The video is slowed down to 1/2 speed to make it look like the cars are moving at a rate we expect real cars to move at - this is a good thing. On the really early videos released before he started doing this, everything goes by so quickly it’s hard to keep track of what in the world happened. On top of that, the commentary and comedy bits (written and recorded after the race is run) are pretty great.
Either way, I was introduced to it by my brother sending me a link to it with the message “This is your fault.” It’s not my fault, but I’ve already watched too much of it, and I really want to go find a thrift store 1:64 car to prep and send into the next KotM series.
Here’s a single race heat. 4 runs, so all four cars cycle through each starting position. Six and a half minutes long including car intros, etc.
And here’s a compilation of all the races in the round of a tournament. One hour, 33 minutes, but you don’t get the intro and outro every 6-8 minutes.
