Tyco Challenge 100 is an electric slot car set manufactured by Tyco, and released in the US, UK, and other markets worldwide in 1983.
Concept
There are several iterations of the Challenge 100, this being the earliest I'm aware of, with a pair of third generation (1968-1983) Corvette C3 Stingray muscle cars on the front of the box, beautiful artwork by the late Ken Smith.
Features
This is a very barebones beginners set, with just the two cars, a small figure 8 track, and no special features. Clearly designed for a low cost, to help beginners get a foot in the door. Possibly the only unusual aspect of this set is its statement on the front of the box which I've not notice before, though admittedly this is only the 26th set I've covered, and the first HP. The statement reads:
'Cars included in this set may differ from those illustrated.'
I'm not sure whether this was just a precaution due to some artistic licence, or if it was likely that the cars in the box really would be different - but we'll cover this later.
Track Layout
With a simple figure 8 track with a total length of 8.5 ft. there's not much to add with this one. It's the simplest set I've seen so far. In fact, I think the only feature mentioned on the box was the plastic barriers! Yep, there you go. Special!
Vehicles
Here's where it gets a little bit interesting. To conclusively understand what cars were actually included in this set, it took me reviewing over 80 of these sets for sale on the internet, and on 95% of them (no exaggeration) the vehicles shown on the front of the box weren't those the seller was offering with the set.
In fact, just two sets had what appeared to be the 'correct' cars from the cover, the No 2 Yellow/Black and No 3 White/Red Corvette C3 as seen here.
Of course, it's not unusual for used vintage slot car sets to have a hodge podge of cars mixed in over time, but the fact that only 2 sets from the 80 I looked at had the "correct" yellow and white cars, with almost every other set having the Black and Red Firebirds tells us something's definitely going on.
That's when I noticed the disclaimer:
'Cars included in this set may differ from those illustrated.'
It seems 'may' was an understatement. They definitely DID differ from those included in the box.
So how can we tell what a "normal" #6200 1983 Tyco Challenge 100 should look like?
Well, obviously having the White and Yellow Corvette C3s would be ideal, however that would be super rare and unrepresentative of the average set.
The most common car I came across when researching this product were these black and red Thunderbirds, by far. Around 50% of the sets I checked had at least one of them. Far less, but still common enough to mention were these Camaro Z-28 cars. Now it's entirely possible these were simply popular at the time, and so often got purchased by Challenge 100 owners, but it's still worth mentioning.
Collectability and Availability
With about a dozen sales in the last month (at the time of writing), these are fairly popular for something made over 40 years ago. But is it because they're good, or because they're cheap?
Probably a bit of both - they're good value for some slot car nostalgia, are genuine Tyco slot cars and tracks made of a much higher quality than anything you'd find in a toy store, and would make an excellent gift for any 80s kid...
