Using Ideal's Motorific electric motor the same as Ideal's Zeroid toys, these boats carried a lot of detail.
I don't recall ever owning any but I have to say they do look good and appear to give great play value.
I'm intrigued by the Automatic Bailing Pump. A nice realistic touch for a toy.
And it seems some came with a free Radar Lighthouse as well.
Later Boaterific toys included these outboard motor powered speed boats.
Anyone ever own any of these little beauties?
I had several Motorific cars when I was a child. I had only one of the Boatarific boats though. It was the yellow Avenger in the third ad. The top popped off the boat to put batteries in. Mine came with a plastic skier that you put foam skis on to keep them floating on the water and used a bit of line tied to the boat to pull them thru the water. It didn't have a bilge pump. I suspect that feature was cut from the later models to help keep costs down.
ReplyDeleteThanks for those recollections, Lance. It sounds like those later outboard motor boats were a lot different to the original ones . If yours had had a bilge pump it might not have worked with your skier in tow . Still sounds like a fun toy though.
ReplyDeleteAs I recall, I owned a couple of the Motorific cars and one of the Zeroids, but the Boaterific toy was a disappointment. I had the King of the Sea cabin cruiser which apparently was top-heavy, so it sailed around with a 40° list all the time. Because of that feature it made use of the bilge pump ALL of the time, and before long the motor and other metal bits inside rusted solid. Don't know why the option of changing the motors between toys was supposed to be such a big play feature; I think they were all the same type of motor.
ReplyDeleteI had Sea Wolf and the outboard Sea Devil. I loved them and played with them in the bathtub and an occasional swimming pool back in the day. My originals are lost to the ages. I picked up a Sea Wolf with box a few years ago. Still looking for a Sea Devil in decent shape and decent price.
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