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MEMORIES:
matthewb03 remembers...when i was really young me and my dad always play domino rally. and that was really cool. More »
Posted on 09/15/08
PHOTOS:
Manufacturer:
While dominoes are really nothing more than a form of playing cards stamped onto blocks of wood, they’ve become infamous for something they were never intended to do… fall over. Something in children – and people with a lot of time but not a lot of hobby choosing sense – drives them to stack the tiny wooden rectangles up in long twisting rows only to flip one over and knock them all down in a fascinating succession of rapid clacking. The drawback to stacking dominoes always came in the question that followed so much setup and so brief a payoff: Was it worth it?
Into the fray comes toymaker Pressman with Domino Rally, the system designed to cut down on arduous set up time and even increase the marvel of falling blocks of wood.
During the few decades of its existence, Domino Rally wore many faces, but certain features remained constant to almost every set. Perhaps one of the more famous domino displays was the Starburst, five rows of dominoes triggered by a single one spreading out from each other. The set also generally included bridges that allowed dominoes to pass both over and under. Zig Zags resembled bridges in that they had a row of stairs leading to the top. The exception was in the steel ball (triggered by the falling dominoes) that wound its way down a crooked ramp and struck the next chain of dominoes. Of course, for those who find these features a little obvious, Domino Rally took to the air with other novelties such as the rocket launcher. The chain reaction would send another steel ball into the triggering mechanism that shot a small aircraft a glorious– albeit short – distance. To top off the coolness, the fins on the rocket started not one, not two, but three more chains of dominoes.
As cool as Domino Rally’s features were, the biggest draw that tempted one to drop twenty dollars on a box was the assembly accessories. Dominoes could easily be snapped into a “pivot track” that maintained a perfect line or scaled bridges with ease. More importantly, every domino could all be set right back up again with a flick of a lever. “Domino Dealers” and “Pathmakers” soon followed, all designed to help those with too little patience or hand-eye coordination to fully enjoy good domino tumbling times. These handy contraptions helped even the most inept domino assembler, doing all the set up work by wheeling along and laying out an immaculate line of dominoes across any flat surface one saw fit.
With the coming of the 1990s came more and more complex assemblies. Perhaps catering to those needing a late-night domino fix, Pressman released dominoes that glowed in the dark. Other sets tried to crossover into other popular toys with helicopters, hang gliders, surfboards and others. A “Mad Lab Set” featured an Eerie Eyeball and a vat of Bubbling Brains for those would like their dominoes served with a generous helping of “gross.”
With Pressman possibly out-innovating itself, they eventually abandoned the toy shelves to the regular old thing. But the fortunate few still possess those closet domino helpers, Domino Rally.
