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Racing Ephemera Vintage Racing Advertising

You May Already be a Winner!

Strombecker slot car giveaway in Boy’s Life magazine

Looking at this ad for a sweepstakes to win a Strombecker Slot Car set makes me wonder if the issue of Boy’s Life that, 40 years later, ended up being scanned for the Google Books archive might have been the winning entry.

It would be like finding Wonka’s Golden Ticket decades after Willy Wonka gave Violet Beauregarde and Augustus Gloop the grand tour.

0 replies on “You May Already be a Winner!”

Strombeck didn’t invent this–the first slot car set up was British (Scalextric); I saw their ad in Autosport in 1957 and we all pitched in to buy one–possibly the first in California. The cars were Ferrari 500s, all metal, and instead of a peg, they had a fifth wheel that pivoted thru 90 degrees that went in the slot. When these wore out after a year we ordered replacements and they were plastic with pegs– Lotuses! MJ

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