Bumper Blasters

It’s crazy to think that for every G.I. Joe, Masters of the Universe, and Transformers toy line that became household names, there are probably a dozen toy lines that never made it big and have mostly been forgotten. Today, I have a perfect example of this phenomenon, Tough Wheel’s Bumper Blasters.

Tough Wheels was an offshoot of Kidco, which was the American subsidiary of Universal Products, a Hong Kong-based toy company that specialized in die cast metal cars and trucks. Kidco was founded in 1977 and only lasted a few years before being absorbed when Universal purchased Matchbox Toys in 1982 (which was purchased by Tyco in 1992). During their brief run, Kidco primarily repackaged existing Universal toys, including the Bumper Blasters.

Bumper Blasters were introduced by Tough Wheels in 1980. These were die cast metal cars that had a special “blast apart” feature. The car was split into an upper body with a spring-loaded plug and a lower chassis with a hole for the plug that would then be secured by pulling the front bumper forward or pushing in on a tab on the back bumper. When kids rolled the car into a nearby wall, the front bumper would slide backwards, releasing the spring, and the body would fly off in a spectacularly satisfying fashion. Seriously, this thing was so much fun to just repeatedly smash into walls or into other toy cars, which is why my car is in such rough shape today.

This bottom view really lets you see the spring-loaded plug, as well as how far out the front bumper extended when it was in the locked position

There isn’t a lot of information out there about Bumper Blasters. As far as I can tell, only four models were released: The GTO (the one I have), the Monza GT, the Javelin-X, and a Daytona Charger.

Oddly enough, Bumper Blasters were a partial re-brand of a previous Universal Products toy called Stunt Squad that debuted in 1977 from Ideal Toys. At that time, Ideal had the stunt toy market cornered with their infamous Evel Knievel bikes and cars, so it makes sense that they’d license these stunt-based die cast cars from Universal.

In the Stunt Squad line, there were three styles of cars – Spin-Out Cars that that would do a 360-degree spin, Flip-Over Cars that flipped over thanks to a spring-loaded peg in the chassis, and Exploding Cars, which later became Bumper Busters. Unfortunately, I can’t find any of the Spin-Out cars online, but here’s an example of a Flip-Over car.

From the Exploding Cars subset, the AMC Javelin was later repainted from white to blue as the Javelin-X for the Blasters line…

the Monza GT Stunt Squad car was released with a slightly brighter yellow paintjob as a Blasters car…

And it’s kind of hard to tell from the few photos I could find, but maybe the Stunt Squad Turbo Stinger was also given a new General Lee-inspired paintjob and released as the Daytona Charger for the Blasters line. However, the Blasters car shown below looks like it might be a different body style, but the angle of the photo makes it pretty difficult to tell. Maybe someday I’ll be able to find more information on this one…

I’m going to assume that my GTO was also a repaint, but I haven’t been able to find any confirmation of that, either.

Legacy

Bumper Blasters – and by extension Stunt Squad – has been all but forgotten. Despite being well-built toy cars that had some really cool, unique features, they just didn’t catch on. However, the concept of Bumper Blasters was clearly a good one, because Hot Wheels would come out with their own style of banged up cars in 1985 called Crack-Ups.

With Crack-Ups, the cars were fitted with special two-sided body panels – one side was pristine and the other side was a dented mess. When hit, the spring-loaded panel would rotate to show the damage. To “fix” it, you just rotated the panel back into place. If the damaged panel was on the front or the back of the car, the hood or trunk lid would often pop open as well. Here’s a perfect example of the two stages of a Crack-Ups car from eBay:

According to the Hot Wheels fandom.com page, Crack-Ups were produced until 1987 with around 40 different models produced. Across the line, damage could be found on side panels, on the front or back, and sometimes even the entire roof of the car would rotate to reveal both sides. I had one of the Crack-Ups where the entire roof would rotate like the one below. Unfortunately, the spring eventually broke and it was stuck on the damaged side, so I threw it away.

While we may not remember Bumper Blasters or Stunt Squad today, that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t a good idea. I know I had a great time playing with my Bumper Blaster, but…that was the only one I ever got, too. I wasn’t out looking to complete the set or anything. Maybe it was a good idea, but simply wasn’t a good enough idea.

Stay tuned because I’m working on another post about another unique idea from Universal Products and Kidco. I’ll try to have that one up soon!