Every once in a while I come across a retro toy line that I’ve never heard of and it always surprises me.  Not that I’m an expert on the topic or anything, but it just blows my mind that, as a kid who was very tuned into the toy world at the time, so much so I wanted to work in the industry even as an adult, that something would have been released from a major company and I was completely unaware of its existence.  With toys being so heavily advertised to us kids in the 80s, it seems impossible that a toy would have come out that passed us by.  And yet, I was recently on Facebook Marketplace and came across a listing for a mint-on-card Matchbox RoadBlasters car.

As you can see from the picture, the car had a flashy paint job, tons of chrome, and…are those missiles? How had I never heard of this line before?  I clearly had to do some digging…

---

RoadBlasters: The Game

Matchbox introduced RoadBlasters toys to coincide with an arcade game of the same name released by Atari in 1987. The game featured a red hot rod decked out with a gun that shoots out of the front.  The goal of the game is to complete all 50 stages of roadways without running out of fuel, blasting enemy vehicles along the way.  Throughout the game, green and red orbs help give your fuel tank a boost, and a helicopter will airdrop temporary upgrades to your car’s arsenal.  The game was considered pretty solid by arcade enthusiasts, but never reached the heights of popularity like Pac-Man, Mortal Kombat, or even Cruis’n USA. The game was ported to many home PC and game consoles, like Atari’s own Lynx system, the NES, the Sega Genesis, and the Commodore 64, with varying results in quality.

Side Note: RoadBlasters features prominently in the backstory of Turbo, the villain in the Disney animated film, Wreck-It Ralph.  Turbo is the best racer in the game TurboTime, but gets jealous when kids start playing the new RoadBlasters game instead.  To recapture his fame, he transfers himself over to RoadBlasters, but that makes the game glitch out, causing both games to be removed from the arcade. Here’s the origin story on YouTube.  

^{The above images – as well as a lot more RoadBlasters graphics – can be found at LaunchBox.}

Here’s a video I found on YouTube to give you a sample of the gameplay:

---

RoadBlasters Cars

The connection between the Matchbox cars and the arcade game is tenuous at best.  The overall concept – a car loaded up with weapons – is the same, but that’s about it. The game only featured one red car, but there were 16 base model RoadBlasters toys released in two waves in 1988. The cars were sold separately or in packs of three.

The die-cast metal cars were all cast from previous Matchbox releases, however they were given new, wild paint jobs. But the big feature of the toy line was, of course, all the plastic, snap-on accessories.  Every car came with a piece that covered part of the car’s body, which was used to hold the miniature missiles, machine guns, and other weapons of mass destruction.  The armor was specific to each car, but the weapons were interchangeable, so the more cars you bought, the more you could mix-and-match your arsenal to create the ultimate Mad Max machine.  Most of the line-up featured cars built for racing, while others were support vehicles that could be used to clear the road of debris, carry extra fuel tanks, or tow a damaged racer.

Unfortunately, neither the toys nor the arcade game really gives us much information about why these cars are carrying an arsenal of weapons. Here’s the blurb from the back of the toys:

Sometime in the distant future, a race will be staged between the Turbo Force and the Motor Lords.  Two teams consisting of high speed race cars and various powerful support vehicles.

Hmm, that’s not much help. Maybe the TV commercial will provide some clarity…

Uh, nope.

I understand that Matchbox probably wasn’t used to having to develop a backstory for their toys, but it seems like they’re missing a lot of key points to the toy line, like, ya know, the guns and stuff.  Personally, I think that lack of lore was one of the downfalls of the line, but I digress… 

The cardbacks for the toys go into a little more detail discussing the two factions, but not much. Here’s the blurb for the Motor Lords:

Here are the Metal Lords cars, listed according to rank on the team. The far left photo is the original cast of the Matchbox car, the middle photo is the stripped-down RoadBlaster version, and the far right photo is the fully-decked out RoadBlaster with all the accessories. (Photos courtesy of T-Hunted)

Similarly, the heroic Turbo Force is described on the cardbacks:

Here are the Turbo Force cars, listed by rank. Once again, we have the original Matchbox car, the stripped-down RoadBlaster, and the decked out Roadblaster. (Photos courtesy of T-Hunted)

While I appreciate T-Hunted’s efforts to photograph each vehicle in its various forms, not all of those pictures do the cars justice, so here are a few better photos I’ve found online so you can see more detail. Some of these cars are missing weapons, which means there are empty holes in the snap-on armor plating. The interchangeable weapons had pegs that would fit into these holes.

And here is the entire series mint-on-card, just so you can see the different packaging designs, each with an illustration of the car:

---

The Power Kings

In addition to the 16 base model cars, there were also four larger support vehicles/playsets collectively known as “Power Kings” and given very militaristic acronyms for names.  These playsets consisted of individual components – vehicles and structures – that combined to form mobile bases of operations.

Two of these sets had diecast metal base vehicles:

A.L.T.R.A.C. (Air/Land Transport and Repair Center): A mobile repair center for Turbo Force

V.A.R.M.I.T. (Vehicle Armor Redesign and Modular Intelligence Transport): The mobile base of operations for the Motor Lords

The other two were simply made of plastic, presumably to keep production costs down and provide a cheaper price point but still give kids a cool playset:

T.R.A.P.P.E.R. (Turbo Force Reconnaissance and Power Reserve): A mobile reconnaissance and refueling depot for Turbo Force

M.O.R.G. (Mobile Operations Resupply Gantry): The Motor Lords’ mobile refueling station

---

Run the Gauntlet

Along with the cars, there was also a race track stunt set called “Run the Gauntlet” that featured a “Ram Blaster” car launcher, a loop, a ramp, and a claw that slammed down and tried to catch the car on the track. A Thunder-Gunner car was included, but I’m assuming the track worked with other RoadBlaster and generic Matchbox cars, too. Unfortunately, I can’t find any video or even photos of this track other than the box art, because I would love to see how it worked.

The major source of information for the RoadBlasters line comes from two Matchbox catalogs from 1988. I can’t say for certain, but I think the one with the white cover was published earlier in the year, while the blue cover came out later.

I bring this up because there are minor differences in the Run the Gauntlet design that makes me wonder if the toy line was being fine-tuned as the company narrowed down production costs and/or started to cut corners because the toys weren’t selling well.

For example, in the earlier product catalog, the set is shown with two sets of cardboard environments – one around the loop and the other around the claw – to give it a sort of rundown, industrial city look. 

However, the later 1988 catalog only shows one cardboard accessory around the claw and even it’s been scaled back from the earlier catalog’s design. 

In addition, the earlier catalog has a “Rally Point Finish Gate” at the end of the track with what looks like plastic flames coming out of the top, while the later catalog’s finish gate loses the flames. My guess is eliminating plastic wherever possible would bring the production costs down. 

Speaking of losing plastic, the race track layout also appears to have been redesigned between the two catalogs as well.  The earlier catalog has a very short span of track before the loop, then a large span of track before the claw; the later catalog has a longer track run before the loop, which is then almost immediately followed by the claw.  It’s possible this might have been a feature of the track, meaning kids could set it up to their liking, but it could have also meant the track configuration was changed to make it cheaper, possibly by removing a track segment. Either way, the inconsistencies seen in the Run the Gauntlet track seems to be indicative of a toy line in flux. 

---

Unreleased RoadBlasters?

RoadBlasters never made it past 1988 before it was canceled. However, it appears there was at least one more wave of toys planned, but never came to fruition.  First, were three decked-out monster trucks, labeled in the later, blue product catalog as the “Rough Terrain Reconnaissance Patrol”.

In that same catalog are three car/airplane hybrids called the “Air Support Squadron”. 

Oddly, both of these sets were grouped together and collectively called “Monster Road Blasters” in the earlier product catalog. Once again, a sign that the line was in flux during its production. 

In all of my research online, I haven’t seen any physical copies of these toys, so for now I’m assuming they were never actually produced. If anyone finds these out in the world, though, let me know!

---

RoadBlasters Abroad

Heavily-armed vehicles weren’t just for American kids! RoadBlasters were also sold in Europe and the United Kingdom. In fact, in a lot of my research, most authors were from France or the UK, with only a handful of Americans writing about the toy line. If you look on eBay, most of the auctions for RoadBlasters are from the UK. So, I have a feeling it was a bit more popular across the pond than it was here.

The toys were essentially the same here and abroad, but the packaging was slightly different. Here’s a breakdown by a user named Little-Run over in the forums at Back in Toys , a French toy collector site.

The UK packaging is on the far-left; the US packaging in is the center; and the European packaging is on the right.

You can see the UK colors are a bit darker, with a black background and more purple-tinted lines compared to the blue background and white lines of the US and European versions. There’s less explanatory text under the vehicle’s name compared to the US version, too.

However, the most glaring difference is in the European packaging, where the line isn’t even called RoadBlasters, but goes by the name TurboForce – the name of the “good guys” in the toy line – even though these are evil Motor Lords’ vehicles. There’s also no explanatory text at all, not even the car’s name. And the art on the cards doesn’t match the vehicle in the package. Instead, they’ve opted to just show the leader of the Metal Lords, Motor Master, regardless of what car is inside.

The packaging for the TurboForce cars follows a similar pattern with a different color scheme for the UK version, this time with a black background and red lines as opposed to a red background and pinkish-white lines for the US and Europe. Once again, the European version has no explanatory text, uses the TurboForce name, and the car art on the packaging is Thunder-Gunner, the leader of TurboForce, even though the toy itself is not the same car:

Unlike in America, there seems to have been at least some attempt to promote the RoadBlasters toy line in the UK with a multi-media campaign. RoadBlasters are featured in stories in five or six (accounts vary) issues of the Eagle and M.A.S.K. comic book in 1988. A few RoadBlasters cars even make the cover of two issues from November 5 and December 3, 1988.

As you can see on the cover of the November 3rd issue, a character named “Skullaxe” is driving for the Metal Lords. Now this is the kind of backstory this toy line needed! I mean, it’s a skeleton with an axe. How can you go wrong with that concept? Swap out the axe for a sword and you’ve got Skeletor who’s still going strong 40 years later. Matchbox should have used this kind outside-of-the-box creativity when it came to expanding the lore of the toys.

Eagle was a very popular British adventure anthology comic book that was published between 1950 and 1969, then it was rebooted in 1982 and ran until 1994. During its second phase of publication, the UK comic book scene was contracting in readership and number of titles, so it wasn’t unusual for comic books to be merged with another title, both sharing the cover for a while until the “main” comic took over again. Since its reboot, Eagle was also known as Eagle & Scream (1984 – 1985), Eagle & Tiger (1985 – 1986), Eagle & Battle (1988), Eagle & M.A.S.K. (1988 – 1989), and Eagle & Wildcat (1989) as it absorbed other comic titles.

As it was an anthology comic and the merging of two titles under one banner, the stories inside weren’t related to one another. Therefore, unfortunately, this means that there was not a RoadBlasters and M.A.S.K. crossover adventure.

I’d love to check out these stories, however, I wasn’t able to find anywhere online to read these old issues of the comic. If any UK collectors out there would be so kind to scan in these RoadBlasters adventures, I’d be anxious to update this post in the future.

---

The Legacy of RoadBlasters    

As I said before, RoadBlasters only lasted for a single year, 1988. It’s unfortunate, because I genuinely think these are cool Matchbox cars. The idea of using old, familiar cars, giving them a new paint job, and loading them up with plastic armor and weapons is pretty ingenious from a production standpoint. You don’t have to make new, expensive die-cast designs, and instead just focus on making creative plastic parts that cost a lot less to make.

It’s too bad that Matchbox didn’t take the money they didn’t have to sink into production and put it towards marketing instead. As far as I can tell there was only ever the one commercial produced. In addition, there was no tie-in cartoon, there were no (American) comic books, and we didn’t get a video game based on the toys, either. And with the right backstory, I think these all could have been a success.

The model I keep leaning towards is M.A.S.K. You take your unique toy designs and pair them with drivers who have distinctive personalities. Instead of focusing on racing, focus on the battle between the two factions, Turbo Force and the Metal Lords. Set it in a dystopian future where the two sides will try to gain the upper hand for control of MegaCity a la C.O.P.S. and I think you’d have a pretty great cartoon and comic book that would have sold toys. Then imagine how cool a new video game based on the toys and cartoon could have been. Choose your starting car, fight off enemies on the road, upgrade your car with better armor and weapons, earn new cars to drive as you advance through the levels – it would have been a blast.

Instead, RoadBlasters the arcade game has become a minor footnote in video game history and the toys are a footnote to that footnote. In all my research, even among die-hard Matchbox car fans, this toy line has mostly been forgotten.

I don’t own any RoadBlasters toys, but now that I know they exist, I’m going to keep my eye out for them at thrift stores, flea markets, and antique stores. If nothing else, they’d make an interesting footnote to my collection.