They showed a toy with a wind-up key and two rockets that went down separate tracks. The show’s intro sequence set the tone with a silly montage of giant gears and bike chains. But did tin toys with gears/chains ever run races?
Perhaps with race horses?
Here’s a photo of me in the mid-1960s with my mechanical tin train. By the time I came around most toys were made of plastic, but there were still a few tin ones around.
ISTR a tin roller coaster. I don’t remember if I had one, but I may have. Since it was a ‘table’ type toy, as opposed to the train, which is a stand-alone thing you can play with anywhere, I’d say that there were tin toys that were flat like a board game and probably featured mechanised vehicles that ran on them – possibly a racing pair. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen such toys.
In the early 1960’s one of my cousins had a wind-up tin toy that had two cars riding on parallel tracks. Gravity did most of the work, as all the wind-up mechanism did was pull them to the top of a hill much the way rollercoasters work.
Here’s an old tin race game with a hand crank.
Not clear what the insides are like.
Seems pretty simple, no mention of cards, etc. so it might just be a spectator sport.
Neck and Neck