We Planned Epic Scalextric Tournaments Watching TFI Friday - The Christmas Present I'll Never Forget

As a child, I always wanted a Scalextric set for Christmas or my birthday, but never got one. That's not to say I wasn't inundated with toys. If my mom hadn't later donated my entire Star Wars collection to the church auction (thank you, Mom!), or if my dog ​​hadn't chewed up my original double-telescoping Darth Vader from 1977 (thanks, Jasper!), I'd Be A Millionaire Now. But, for some reason, the Formula 1 racing game got away from me.

So in my senior year at college, when my parents asked what they could offer the student who apparently had everything, I asked for a Scalextric set. I could imagine the scene perfectly: I would have set it up in my dorm room as a way to entice the ladies to come back for a quick “circuit” or two. Or, better yet, we'd set it up in the living room, shaped like a figure eight around the back of the couch, where we'd hold epic Scalextric tournaments while we watched TFI Friday on our rented (yes, rented) TV, to decide who would do the dishes or take out the trash. Or, when we were feeling really lazy, we could use the cars to deliver cups of tea between roommates. “Pass the TV remote, you say? No, but I'd be happy to do it for you Scalextric…"

So Christmas came around, and I finally got the gift of my dreams, despite my parents asking I didn't set it up immediately and asked if I couldn't at least help peel the germs or set the table, as it was nearly noon by the time I got up to open my gifts, and everyone would be there any minute, so it stayed in its box until I could take it back to college to enjoy with my less demanding roommates.

< p class="dcr-1b64dqh">Obviously, being students, we didn't put it on right away, because that would have involved doing something productive as a collective, which was way too much effort when Dawson's Creek was on Channel 4. But eventually we cleared out the living room, opened the box and got down to what was considered work: laying the pi ste, plug in the controllers and place the cars.

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And that was crap. The full track wouldn't fit in the living room. No one wanted to bother moving the sofa, which would affect the position of our TV spots. It didn't even include a loop to loop so we packed most of the track into a boring oval in the middle of the room Even though between us we were majoring in chemistry, politics, history and economics , none of us could figure out how tight the grip had to be to keep the cars from running off the track at almost every turn. hat time a car got blown away, did you really expect me to get off my comfy couch and put it back on the track? And (one for the Scalextric aficionados) there are only a limited number of times you can flatten those two little metal tabs on the underside of the cars so they fit into the groove of the track. ..