You’re sitting in front of the 15-inch Trinitron on a Saturday morning in 1980, chowing down on a bowl of Count Chocula to top off the sugar intake you had the night before at the monster truck rally you went to with your friend Jimmy. This was a near-religious experience for you, almost on par with seeing The Empire Strikes Back a few weeks earlier.
Your ears are still ringing from the awesome assault on your senses by the real Bigfoot when a commercial interrupts Thundarr the Barbarian. You gasp at what rolls across the screen: tiny battery-powered trucks with working headlights that appear to be able to climb over everything in sight. Dear God, were all four wheels spinning? Did those exhaust fumes at the MegaDome mess with your head? No, Stomper 4X4s were the real deal, and we’re gonna revisit them now. Everybody take it to the top, we’re gonna Stomp!
Sunday! Sunday! Sunday!
It was impossible to ignore the popularity of lifted off-road vehicles and monster trucks at the dawn of the 1980s. Bigfoot was built in 1975, but fully captured the kid-culture zeitgeist when it crushed cars for the first time in 1981. On television that same year, Colt Seavers regularly took flight in his lifted GMC K-2500 Sierra Grande as the titular fall guy in The Fall Guy. And on streets all over America, lifted pickups were a common sight.
Toy designer Eddy Goldfarb recognized the big-truck trend as a golden opportunity for a new kind of action toy. Goldfarb was already a seasoned toy designer with a few hits under his belt, including well-known gems like KerPlunk, Battling Tops, Yakity-Yak Talking Teeth, and Brunswick Air Hockey. Goldfarb clearly had a knack for clever toy ideas, and toymaker Schaper (best known at the time for games such as Ants In The Pants, Cootie, and Don’t Break The Ice, as well as the Super Jock line – which were toy athletes, not the other thing) bought Goldfarb’s toy 4X4 concept.
Stompers initial offerings included a Chevy K-10 Scottsdale, K5 Blazer, Bronco, Dodge Warlock, and David’s favorite Jeep, the SJ Honcho. Wow, with that lineup, you could recreate the scene in No Country For Old Men where the drug deal went bad.
Stomper’s plastic bodies were each unique and faithful in detail if not proportions to their full-size counterparts, but they all snapped over the same Stomper chassis. It was sized just large enough to house a single AA battery, and a center-mounted motor hidden beneath a cover powered all four wheels. Big warnings of DO NOT REMOVE on motor cover did little to discourage curious young Autopians from exploring the mechanical magic within.
As shown below, the motor’s output shaft extended from both ends of the motor to hold a pair of pinion gears that interfaced with worm gears to drive the front and rear axles simultaneously, giving the toys full-time four-wheel drive.
A later innovation was the “Stomper II,” which featured two forward speeds and a “freewheeling” mode for unpowered play when the battery ran out. The switch beneath the chassis moved the motor laterally to contact one of the two worm drives, or you could leave it in the middle position to disengage the drivetrain.
Stompers were geared for torque, not speed, and challenging the trucks’ ability to power over or through obstacles was the source of their immense play value. With their gear-shaped tires, the little trucks could climb any grade as long as it wasn’t so steep that the truck flipped over backward. The icing on the cake was a tiny light bulb (with a filament and all, not an LED) mounted to the front of the chassis, shining through “headlights” – translucent windows in the grille.
As was seemingly the case with so many toys Gen-Xers remember, Stompers could impart some real pain if their power was not respected. Playfully using your napping sister as Stomper terrain seemed like it would be both fun and hilarious, right up until her hair wrapped around the axles and your Stomper climbed onto her scalp to the tune of a parent-alerting scream.
Configurations of couch cushions, books, and blankets (among other household items) were excellent fodder for Stompers, not to mention whatever challenges the outdoor world offered. Still, Schaper also offered play sets with simulated off-road situations. These were essentially just a bunch of injection-molded plastic terrain bits, but they fit into a large box that looked imposing when wrapped and under the tree in December 1981.
Stompers initially offered both foam tires and rubber tires to optimize indoor or outdoor use. These rubber tires, by the way, were very similar in size and shape to the ones that came with Lego, which meant that if you left them sitting out, they often got tossed into the box with all the bricks and took forever for you to find again. Why, Mom?
Hey, look, it’s been forty years, so we’ve forgiven Mom. Maybe. Let’s talk about the actual car bodies you could put on these capable little chassis.
No, The A-Team Van Was A Rough Riders Ripoff, Not A Stomper
Later, the Stompers line expanded into other vehicle bodies, including some really fun ones like a fifties Chevy Nomad.
It got even better. How about a Subaru BRAT?
Or maybe a Subaru (Leone) Hatchback with 4WD?
Small Japanese pickup favorites were also represented, like the Lil Hustler:
A personal favorite? An AMC Eagle SX4 coupe: the Dollar General Quattro!
A young Torch could go for a Baja bug, especially with the available “stunt wheel.”
The instructions show you could place the stunt wheel on the bottom of your Stomper to do wheelies and other tricks with just two of the driven wheels.
Things eventually went kind of nuts with Stompers becoming almost any kind of vehicle, including ten-wheel-drive tractor-trailer trucks.
Tractor pull fan? Well, it was 1981, so I can see that, and here you go. Note the front counterweight.
Larger Stompers saw the light of day, as well as even amphibious ones, and a short-lived series based on those three-wheeled ATVs that subtracted ten years from your lifespan if you rode them slowly, and if you cornered on them too quickly, subtracted your lifespan from your lifespan.
Honestly, there were so many Stompers spin-offs that it takes a full fifteen-minute video to explain them all. Nerd out, why don’t you?
As with all fads, there were numerous knock-offs (particularly Rough Riders that some would argue were better) until the entire genre slowly diminished as kids got older and younger children simply became interested in other toys; a familiar story.
Stomped Out
Eventually, the inevitable happened. Independent toy firms like Schaper were swallowed up by mega corporations; in Schaper’s case, it was by Tyco in late 1986. Stompers only lasted two more years until 1988, then reappeared under the Dreamworks brand and again from 1997 to 1999 as a Peachtree Playthings product. Tinco Toys was the last to offer Stompers, from 2001 to 2002.
I was rather astonished by some of the prices on eBay for some decent-condition Stomper toys. Non-functional parts or display examples can be had for cheap, but even a reasonably decent running Stomper can command anywhere from $80 to $100. Mint and in-box examples might fetch $400 or more; even $1000 in rare cases. There’s a price to be paid for nostalgia, and it can be a steep one.
Still, why not find a Stomper for yourself? They’re fun, well-crafted toys from a different time when we were awed by much simpler things. Even at those inflated prices, a Jeep Honcho Stomper would be a lot easier to keep around than a real one, and unlike David Tracy’s, there’s no chance of a tree falling on it.
Top graphic images: Etsy; Schaper Toys
I had a few Stompers and a Rough Rider or two. My favorite was the white Jeep Honcho. They were tough to keep batteries in; not as bad as CD players, but you’d constantly have to raid the hardware drawer for anything with AAs. And the tiny headlight bulb tended to go out. The courses were neat and reconfigurable, but ultimately I think I just got bored with them. Set up a course, switch on the truck, and… watch. R/C always sounded so exotic.
The two Subaru’s were my favorites! Mainly because my aunt and uncle had the exact full-size versions at the time.
You forgot Stomper Speedsters.
http://www.route21.com/stompers/speedster/index.html
These predate me slightly, but I definitely remember Bigfoot everything. My Power Wheels was a little Bigfoot.
OMG my childhood just came rushing back…i’m just flooded with nostalgia, thank you!
I begged Mom to buy me a Stomper.
She bought me…
…the one with the brown C3 Corvette body.
At the time, I was terribly disappointed, but perhaps it explains my affinity for cars on 4×4 truck frames now.
Between Stompers, Tyco slot cars and the usual Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars I was completely mesmerized by all things with wheels during those years. It appears that the Stompers carved a rut into my brain as well. I seem to love 70’s and 80’s 4x4s and also all the vehicles through the 90’s. Modern cars suck. They can keep their screens and lane departure warnings. I’ll take hair tangling torque and simple switches all day long.
I had one of these for a few moments. I totally got it stuck in my uncle Juan’s combover one Christmas dinner. After my mom cut it out she promptly threw it away.
Modern awesomeness is 1/24 scale RC crawlers. Or 1/30 scale. Same go-anywhere drivetrain but you get to control where it goes. They’re a hoot!
Agreed! I’ve got several SCX24s (one of which I made my own Morrvair body for) and an SCX30, and I love them!
If you left your stomper on the package tray of your family’s land-yacht sedan in the summer, the rubber tires would melt and become one with the package tray.
McDonalds also had a series of non-powered ones in Happy Meals. I had a couple as a kid.
We used to have mud bog races with them. The rules were you had to use the stomper frame, but other than that, you could modify it all.
One kids dad worked at McDonald Douglas. That sucker had a different motor/battery/tires….
I had a few of these as a kid when they first came out. And I am vaguely recalling that they did a McD’s tie-in to have them in Happy Meals for a minute when I worked there, which would have been in ’86-87.
Funny to think from the perspective of forty years on that only about 4 years separated playing with toys like these and having a license and an after-school job. Not that I wouldn’t TOTALLY play with these today if I still had them. As my LEGO, RC plane, and model train collections will attest. 🙂
And I sure do wish I still had all my childhood toys. My Matchbox, Hot Wheels, Star Wars, and GI Joe collections would have about funded my retirement. And I could kill my Grandmother for giving away my THREE giant totes of LEGO while I was away at college. Sigh.
Can we do Toy Tuesday and Pontiac Pthursday? Spread the wealth a bit.
I still miss Mercury Monday.
I vaguely recall having something called Mighty Mos as a small child (late 70’s). They were 2wd only. I also remember a Smokey and the Bandit pair of 4wd toys from the early ’80s. Can’t recall the name off the top of my head (I’m old).
The neutral position on the Stomper II was most important for the case when your older brother turned on the Stomper and jammed it against your head, winding up your hair around the axles until the little motor and its insane ratio worm gear drive stalled out. With the shifter/switch accessible from the sides, your mom could hit neutral and tease it out.
In my case, it was an early Stomper that had a slider switch on the bottom, which was pressed tightly against my scalp as the little motor fought to keep it in place. This required careful removal of the truck body, then unclipping the battery cover and removing the now warm AA. This solved the immediate problem, but mom had to then unclip the ‘DO NOT REMOVE’ cover and yank the motor & worm gears out to release the death-grip.
I had Stompers and loved them. I remember they came with 2 sets of tires, but only remember using the foam ones, I think they had better grip. I still have a couple on a shelf in my den but unfortunately they quit working and I haven’t taken them apart to try and figure out why.
Same. I think the idea was that the foam tires would get destroyed if used outside, so they had the rubber, but they didn’t grip at all as well.
Also, the rubber tires were VERY hard to get on over the plastic hubs, and the foam tires would start to tear if you removed them too many times, so I always kept my foam tires mounted.
Come to think of it, I still have my carrying case of Stompers at my parent’s house. I bet the foam tires have completely disintegrated by now. Good thing I still have the rubber tires still on the cardboard tube!
I wonder how the vintage ones have apparently survived? Maybe leaving them out of UV is enough? I don’t know how different they are, but I used to work with a sneakerhead and he told me a lot of sneaker foam breaks down even without being used. I think he said there are ways to restore them, but I checked out at that point as collecting sneakers was already like collecting dental floss and toothbrushes to me, so telling me they don’t even preserve well when unused sent my brain down a different track.
I had a similar truck as a kid in the mid 80s. It was a Bigfoot 4×4 that was bigger than these toys (probably closer to a foot long) and had switches coming out of the top of the cab, one for forward/neutral/reverse and one for RWD/neutral/4WD.
I got that same Bigfoot for Christmas one year. As I recall it had a plastic key that you inserted to turn it on, or maybe change speeds. I promptly dropped that key down into the La-Z-Boy, and when my aunt reached down inside the chair to retrieve it, she discovered my (very dead) missing hamster that had escaped months before. Ahh, memories….
I had forgotten about the key. I got curious so I found some on eBay. This is exactly what I remember mine looking like. https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=playskool+bigfoot+monster+truck+1983&_sop=12
Also sorry to hear about your hamster.
I got the Radio Shack yellow Ford RC truck in 4th grade. Best gift ever.
Ah. I think you talk about the Playskool one. I came across one at a flea market and picked it up. Neat thing. I had two of the later Hot Wheels ones that you could rev up by pushing on the body and throw into gear; one in the classic scheme and one in the scheme with the red/orange stripe that Bigfoot 8 up there is wearing.
Yep, I had the Playskool one.
Fun fact: if you removed the body and the battery cover, you could install a 9V battery.
Clarkson: “Speed and power!”
i forgot to mention that. Read about it on a number of sites but now that these are $100+ “keepsakes” we can’t do that any more. Or can we?
Hell yes, we can!
If you’re so inclined, go on eBay and search for “stomper replacement motor” – there are lots of options, including one that offers three motors for $18 😀
Edit: to be clear, I did that search just now to see what it would return and was pleasantly surprised.
I’m glad you posted this. A wonderful memory was released from the rusty grasp of my brain with the sight of Stomper. And yes, the slow speed led us to hop it up with a 9volt upgrade. Even then, they were not what the kids today would call fast.
Not surprising to find out they are expensive collectables now. Most were lovingly destroyed in use. Just like my first gen GI Joes.
Glad I could help 🙂
I remember those. Seemed like there wasn’t a chemistry class in Junior High that didn’t have the teacher confiscate at least one. Later in the year, we could hear him playing with them.
I’m a few years younger, in 2nd grade there was a designated Stomper “Parking Lot” where the teacher made us leave them in class.
I did not have any of these handed down to me, so not sure if my older cousins had any or they were just too warn down. I did have Darda cars though, and those are worthy of an article for sure.
Oooh, I think we had a few of those as well! Windup cars with kind of a unique ratchet mechanism, right? And they ran a long time and went really fast and had their own tracks…
Yup, they would go up to 30mph. We had the Ferrari F1 car, a couple JPS and an Essex Lotus F1 cars, I think either a Porsche or Mercedes Group C car (the fastest one we had) and a red VW Bug that was too heavy to go through the loops. Our dog, Molly, would go fuckin bonkers and try to attack them when she was a puppy.
I personally distinctly remember having a metallic red C4 Corvette. Well played with. We might have had another but I can’t remember. We also had the later model chargeable electric Hot Wheels cars with the “Daytona 500” track set, and I think that Corvette might have lived long enough for a couple laps there.
Dardas were awesome! Compared to any other windup cars, it was like they came from another planet.
I was always impressed with the level of detail on Dardas.
“…15-inch Trinitron on a Saturday morning in 1980”
Maybe the rich kids. We had a 12-inch black and white TV that only got one channel and that was NBC.
My little brother’s friends had these.
Right? This guy over here with a Trinitron. Mine was a humble Magnavox household, thank you very much.
We had a 32″ Zenith that was at least color but old enough that the channel knob had broken off and we had to use pliers to change the channel for a while.
We had a black and white Zenith ourselves, to be honest.
We had a 14″ color with a remote bought at Montgomery Wards in ’83 or so. Living the high life.
We had a 17 inch color with a remote from JC Penney but that was later in the 80s.
By the mid 90’s dad had a Panasonic 32″? I took an old Magnavox given to us by an uncle to college with me in ’94. I left the old Monkey Wards TV at my old apt when I graduated with an engineering degree.
I remember these. Pretty sure I had the orange Nissan.
I did grow up with these as a monster truck obsessed kid. Think I might still have a couple. Fun little offroaders.
One thing I did always wonder was whether or not the TNT Motorsports Stomper/Stomper Bully monster trucks were related to these toys in any way. Nowadays I don’t think they were, but ya never know…
Can confirm awesomeness. I had the black Ford pickup Stomper when I was in kindergarten. One of my favorite toys ever, with one caveat.
I once took an off-roading excursion into my hair where it did actually get stuck. The Stomper came out of it okay, but my bowl cut was pretty ruined.