I know there wasn’t really a publicly-accessible internet in 1972, and certainly nothing like Amazon or Temu where you could just order whatever you want by looking at a few pictures, reading a bit of text making a choice and then having your stuff show up at your door. Well, except that there absolutely was. They were just made of paper and called catalogs, but they did essentially the same thing, with the help of the telephone network.
And, of course, these catalogs, like the famous and now quite defunct Sears catalog, had all kinds of interesting automotive options. There were, famously, real cars you could order, like the Allstate, which was Sears’ re-badged Henry J, but today I just want to focus on kid cars, those little ride-on vehicles, powered either by motors or kid-leg power.
These are all from Sears’ 1972 Christmas Book (and all scans provided by the catalog obsessives over at christmas.musetechnical.com) and there’s some pretty interesting options for the early ’70s kid-on-the-go. Let’s look at them! And judge them, harshly, for fun!
Let’s start with some sweet pedal cars, the pinnacle of which seems to be Sears’ take on a Jaguar E-Type, which looks pretty good, considering, even if it is a pretty unlikely candidate to be licensed by Sears for a kid’s car? I mean, Jaguar always had a lot of cachet, especially in America, so maybe not? Still, it’s a lot more class than I expected out of a ’70s Sears catalog. And, I bet it was a bit more reliable than a real Jag, since I don’t think this one had Lucas electrics.
I think even more interesting is the real-car tie-in down below; sure, we have the Meyers Manx-ish Gator Bug, which is cool, and the Way-Out Dragster for toddlers willing to do a bit of experimentation with drugs, but I’m more fascinated by the two stamped steel cars at the bottom.
They’re both using the same basic mold, but one is a fire truck and the other is a… Pinto?
Yep! It’s a Pinto! Remember, this was before the Pinto had acquired its, um, explosive reputation. But beyond the Pinto logo and stripe, did anything make this pedal car Pinto-like?
No. Not really. I tried to see where some of the styling cues may have come from, and it looks like it has an early Mustang bumper and a grille/front end that resembles a Jeep “razor grille” design, but other than the Pinto stripe decal, Sears really phoned it in with this one.
What if you want some power, though? What if your kid is a lazy-ass with weak, rubbery legs? Well, Sears has some electric cars and trikes as well! And half of them are designed around jobs like being a telephone lineman or construction worker!
Honestly, those are pretty cool. The Bell Telephone truck even kind of emulates the famous Bell System service vehicle livery, and has a ringing phone!
The Construction Buggy has all the design refinement of a sandbox, and it actually seems like it can sort of function like a mobile sandbox, with that big front bin. These things could do up to 2 mph! Perfect for getting to and from the playground on time when you have a stack of coloring waiting for you in your inbox.
That Big Bumper thing seems to be like a bumper car sort of thing, and I can imagine how much fun it would have been, smacking into furniture all over the house, for about 20 minutes until your short-tempered ’70s parents finally had enough and put out their cigarettes so they could grab you by your upper arm and administer a brutal and protracted spanking.
You know, you don’t have to go with the first name for a product that pops into your head. You can take your time! That means, if you have a toddler’s riding toy that uses pedals, you don’t have to call it a Ped-O-Trike. You could think of something else, if you wanted! Maybe, you know, anything else, like something that didn’t immediately bring up thoughts of pedophiles. I mean, if you want. It’s an option.
Look at these chain-driven beasts! That Indy-style racer seems pretty cool, but check out the one with the two-speed stick shift above it! Is that front wheel drive? Does it have a little chain in that front fork from the pedals to the wheel? I’ve never seen anything like that.
There’s also that Zoom Zoom pump-action one that seems to operate like a railroad handcart? Could you steer and pump that crankshaft at the same time? Wait, can that thing steer at all? Looking at it, I’m not so sure. The front wheels may be on some kind of center pivot but how – oh! Feet! You steer with your feet! Whew, okay, glad we figured that out.
This is also kind of cool – a little set of wheels and a steering wheel and other bits needed to make a go-kart! An old school wooden go-kart! These are the tricky parts to source, so you could just order this and then your dad could go out in his woodshop and start making the wooden body, which involves you hearing some hammering and then a yell of SONNNOVABITCH and then he’s just in there swearing and drinking until he passes out.
Eventually you’ll end up riding an orange crate with wheels on it down a hill with no brakes, not to worry.
Good times!
That Indy style racer looks cool, but I bet turning was bad and that steering wheel looks weak.
I like the design of the the pump-action one, but I bet the pumping gets annoying.
“Hey hon, let’s get Junior one of these so they can get an early start on their mid-40s lower back problems.”
Early-60s me would have worn the Jag’s tires out in no time at all. I remember pedaling cars and tractors around the track at my nursery school. Oddly, the track was a figure-8 which reminded me of the mayhem viewed on ABC’s Wide World of Sports episodes filmed at the Islip Motor Speedway. Neither track exists anymore.
The Jaaaaag was made by Pines for Sears… Possibly a little better known for race car-inspired pedal cars, probably the best-remembered being the 1960s open-wheel Lotus/Ford Indy racer replica. I had one of those, and I did wear the tire tread down quite a bit as a kid! They had very simple metal space frame of sorts with a plastic body tub bolted to it — a lot like the way a modern fiberglass over space-frame racers are built, actually.
This is the second time that Autopian featured toys that I should know but have no memory of. (The other was the injection mould hot wheels ). My parents must have torn the pages out of the Christmas catalog before I got to see it. Or there is a glitch in my Matrix
Some of this stuff reminds me of the thing I had as a kid. It was called a “Chopperroo” and it was a chain drive trike, similar to what’s here. It really leaned into the “chopper” theme as I recall – had a tall seat in back, you could recline there a bit, and had something of a gorilla bar setup (or as reasonably close to that as you could muster for a 4-year old). Compared to the big wheels that other kids were riding around on, it was pretty badass.
I remember going down one of the bigger hills in our neighborhood, taking my feet off the pedals (for maximum speed of course) and realizing in horror that I had somehow pulled the the handlebars off completely and the thing was absolutely freewheeling wherever it decided it wanted to go. I dont think that trip lasted very long…probably careened into a curb or someone’s lawn pretty fast, but yeah…that’s a memory.
We all had horrible accidents. I know I did. I grew up in the sticks and all of the neighbors had lots of dirt tracks and dirt piles to run our crappy bikes on. Somehow I had a girls bike for a long time and one day we were coming down a huge hill and ramped off a dirt pile his dad had made with his tractor. We go airborne and the kids on the BMXs were fine but I lost control of mine and landed, on my groin, on the upended handlebar. That fucking hurt. I was in agony on the couch for the rest of the day. My parents had a very long gravel driveway and part of it goes down a steep hill. At the bottom is a sharp curve and more than once I slid in the corner on the gravel. I still have scars on my knees from those.
I rode a knockoff BMX very aggressively just about everywhere when I was about 8-9. There was a forest near home with partial trails and I rode through that constantly. One day I hit my favorite dirt ramp to go flying for a few feet, and after I landed my handlebars only had a memory of a connection to the rest of the bike.
We moved away and I never rode a bicycle much at all after that. It’s a shame, because I could have used the exercise.
I’ve seen at least one Sears Catalog Store, or depot, way out in eastern Alberta. This wasn’t a Sears Department Store, just a common shipping hub for the farmers out there who could order from the catalog and shave a buck on shipping by having the whole lot dropped in town. (It was closed, of course, but no one had taken over the retail space and the signs were still visible.)
My grandparents made regular visits to the Sears in their small southern Tennessee town. It kept some paint and tools in stock in the small ‘showroom’ that I remember being about the size of a takeaway restaurant ‘dining room’ and had a much larger ‘stockroom’ where your items were stored until you picked them up.
There was one like that in Winchester, VA, when I was small–I remember going to pick things up with my mother. I’m not sure what’s there now, in part because I’m not quite sure where it was. It closed when the mall opened with a big Sears store in 1982.
I had the Little Tikes Cozy Coupé as a young ‘un, and I’d have been stoked to have something similar with pedals, let alone propulsion of any sort.
Depending on my age, the fire truck and front-dump truck would likely have been my choices, but I have a soft spot for that blue Manx analog, and of course if the bumper car had been a thing I can imagine fellow neighborhood kids and siblings burning through batteries like crazy for those.
As for the Ped-O-Trike, I didn’t get “pedophile” from that, but my mind also doesn’t go there, generally. My first thought was that it might have been better as Ped-All-Trike, to reinforce that it’s a pedal-powered vehicle, and also as a double function for Peds (kids), and that it could go “all over” versus a foot-powered one. But I’m not in marketing, nor was I at that time. Maybe Pedal-O-Trike?
Yes, it was a portmanteau of pedal and trike with the marketing fad “o” inserted in the middle. “Pedo” is a common term for “pedophile” nowadays, so it’s not a stretch for the mind to go there, though back then, almost nobody would know that term and, though this catalog is several years before my time, even in my time, the dangers were barely considered beyond warnings of some near mythical monster clowns handing out LSD-laden stamps and random kidnappers in vans who’d ask for help finding a lost puppy while parents ignored the very real monsters they were friends with or related to (when they weren’t pimping their kids out to them). That didn’t happen to me—I was always suspicious of any adult who wanted to spend time with a kid as even being a kid, I didn’t want to be around too many of them—but that’s the story of more than a few ex girlfriends and friends. Most of them now that I think about it. (One that wasn’t molested experienced her father killing her mother and himself when she was 2 and being left alone in the house with the bodies for several days, so I’m going to go ahead and count her in that list as well as another who I don’t think was molested, either, but talked of having to navigate naked, passed out post-orgy people to make herself breakfast because that’s sketchy enough for suspicion.)
That took a turn
I was struck by the kid with the striped bell-bottoms. _I_ had striped bell-bottoms, except they were red, white and blue. Either because my mom was patriotic, or they were on sale. And look, it’s the same kid in the chain-driven and battery-powered pictures! And look look, the kid sitting in the pseudo-Pinto has the same style of clothes but different colors! Is it the same kid? How did they do that without Photoshop back then?!
My buddy was lucky enough to have that Jag, which was so far beyond any of the lame 1-pce body pedalmobiles the rest of us had. We used to tie it to one of our bikes and haul it down the street at speeds FAR beyond its original design intent, at which point the pedals basically became food processor blades, god help you if you didn’t keep your feet clear. Much carnage usually ensued, especially if you weren’t paying attention when the tow bike decided to brake.
One thing I was really hoping to see in the electric section was a forklift I had from this same period, with working forks that could actually lift stuff. Never been able to find a pic of it. Anybody have one like it?
I recall a Kenner Big Kat forklift, but I didn’t have one.
Yeah, that’s the only one I can find online but it looks like they only started making them in 1978, and I’m sure I had this thing no later than ’73 or ’74. It might have been some private label thing for one of the big chains up here… I need to get my hands on some of the early 70s Canadian department store Christmas catalogs.
I had that 2-speed super shift chopper! The front end was heavy. Low gear was higher than 1:1 so you already had a speed advantage over the kids on big wheels, BUT there was a weight and acceleration penalty. When you got up to speed and hit 2nd gear you were flying. So fast. Big wheel kids didn’t stand a chance.
The front tire was rubber so you had actual traction unlike the plastic tire on the big wheel. This was a bummer actually because part of the fun of big wheels was doin’ burnouts and braking by locking up the front wheel until it had 2 flat spots.
I’ve never seen one before (that I remember; I was 3 in 1972)–is that two enclosed chains, one for low gear and one for high?
I never saw the innards of that transmission. I wish I had. I just remember sliding that shift lever back & forth. You could kinda feel that you were engaging some clunky gear teeth.
These were awesome when I was a kid, they’re still awesome: 10/10, would ride again (but I don’t fit).
I’m not disparaging these. I love them. We even got a little ride-on motorcycle for my eldest when they were ~2-3y to putter around in the house.
In ’72 I was eight. My dads cars were only V8s and plastic was for Tupperware. I had a metal go cart that I rode down my driveway that is slight hill with a telephone pole directly across the street. I remember running into it and breaking the front and then going with my Dad to get it welded back up. Good times.
Man, I had that fire engine. Until I left it behind my dad’s car and he backed over it in the morning on his way to work.
When I was a kid, both of my grandmothers kept a supply of my parents’ old toys from the 60s and early 70s for me when I visited. The toy vehicles were made almost entirely of metal, with lots of pointy edges that I’m sure I cut myself on at some point. One such toy was an ambulance that was nearly two feet long and weighed about five pounds.
The Tonka telephone company truck (with Bell livery) that I got for my 4th birthday was about that size
The “pinto” and the firetruck are steel bodied. I had a second-hand version of the “pinto”, in a blue metallic similar to Ford’s Brittany blue. I remember my dad popping off those chrome hubcaps to grease the wheels. One of my earliest car related memories.
yes! I thought so but confused myself with the description. I fixed it. Thank you.
I wonder what three-time champion Ronnie Beck would say about “riding an orange crate with wheels on it down a hill with no brakes.”
He famously said, “Gravity is my co-pilot.”
I only come here for the Simpsons references.
None of the hills where I lived had brakes either, unless you count trees and mailboxes.
I have never seen most of these. It’s always the all-steel ’50s and ’60s pedal cars at antique malls. Or pedal tractors. Or reproductions thereof. The battery electric ones in particular intrigue me, since I didn’t realize they went back that far.
I do wonder, though, what bikes you could get back then. That was the age of the Krate, Sliks, and stik shifts, after all. As witnessed by that trike.
My best friend had a Schwinn Pea Picker (for its green color I guess) a Sting-Ray “muscle bike” with high rise handlebars, banana seat, and a five-speed stick shift. I think the fenders were chrome, too. Sears had a knockoff version (Spyder?) of these.
My bicycle was red.
I have a stupid story about one of those. I had that Schwinn Pea Picker in green secondhand. This was at a time when all my friends were riding “dirt bike” style bikes, and I absolutely hated that thing. Our road fed into a busier main road, and I have a distinct memory of being pissed at it for one reason or another near that intersection, and pushing it. I shit you not, the thing rolled into the busy intersection, slowly turned, and rolled back towards me out of the intersection. I remember watching this in disbelief that it rolled that far, and at how lucky I was that a car or truck didn’t ram into it. It still freaks me out a little when I think about it.
When I was a kid, Dad found a beat up yellow Stingray Deluxe at a yard sale. We had it a shortwhile before my brother got the idea that he and his friend would take it apart and restore it. It was taken apart…and then spent 20 some years in dad’s garage until I decided a couple years ago to take it back and actually make it a functional bike again. And I succeeded.
I get the “my bike was red” though: for much of my childhood I had used BMX bikes, particularly a chrome frame the stickers had worn off of. The cool kids had GT or Dyno freestyle bikes with the plastic mags and wheel pegs and brake detanglers so you could spin the bars 360. Same thing, different decade.
Is no one going to mention the extra axle on the Little Wheel Tandem Delivery? Is this so fat kids could cross local bridges without exceeding the per-axle allowable load?
You must be too young to recall the extreme density of all stuffed ’70s dogs.
I had the fire engine when I was a kid! It was metal, though. I loved that thing.
I submitted requisition requests for equipment similar to the rugged construction buggy every year. Dad would point out that I would be driving the tractor soon enough…
It looks like the chopper would have a pedal driven wheel that drives the front tire by friction, so maybe the shifter just varies the pressure on that driven wheel. Or would that make it go in reverse from what I’m picturing? So a chain drive is more likely.
I had the Jaguar when I was tiny. And I had weak spaghetti legs. I could make it one way on the concrete walkway in front of my house, but turning around and trying to go the other direction was an exercise in futility. Alas, no one would answer my calls for help on the fake plastic CB Radio. And if I pumped the pedals too hard on that slight grade the rear wheels would briefly spin before I had to get out and drag the car back to the other side of the walkway so I could “drive” it again. I was very proud to own a Jaguar, though. At least until I woke up and dragged it outside the next summer only to realize I had already outgrown it. And I still couldn’t pedal the thing uphill while tip-toe-ing the pedals and sitting on the trunk.
I’m digging how the Pinto’s desigm features sharp creases and angled surfaces. Maybe it really was best to be thrown clear in those days…
The Jaguar has “map pockets”. For when you’re running away from home, but driving, like a civilized person. And you need to know where you’re going.
Jaguar drivers aren’t civilised people. The owner of that pedal E-type is likely to be a very small cad and/or bounder.
That “Pinto” is very much just a Jeep with the Pinto graphics stuck on the side.
But just imagine the Madmen pitch meeting for the Ped-O-Trike, my god.
I was once fortunate enough to be the proud owner of that exact model of Jaguar pedal car. I called it my “Drag Wire,” which is still kinda how I pronounce “Jaguar” in my head.
Not that much different from how the British break out the u.
They’re so fancy, they give it an extra syllable!
I’m sure more than one Lucas equipped Jaguar has dragged wires