Withdrawal of The Product
The product was withdrawn from the market in the mid 1980s (after a brief attempt to reinvent TCR as a slot racing system, which was incompatible with all earlier cars and track).
TCR may have failed next to its most obvious competitor Scalextric for these and other reasons. TCR cars were matchbox sized and much smaller than Scalextric cars. This did mean that (relatively) more track could be laid out in one room.
TCR was also doomed by the new regulations for child safety. The system required at least 2 amps to correctly drive all the cars and jam cars used. The original set released in the early 70s gave the customer a 1/2 amp transformer which was reported to give children electric shocks when they went to fix a stalled car or a De-railed car. As a response Ideal changed the transformer in the mid 70s to a 1/4 amp transformer this was barely enough to run one car, when players used 2 cars plus the jam cars it was very hard to maintain the rhythm needed to keep the cars rolling properly with such low amperes. Sales for the product dropped off dramatically because of the change. Tyco had the same problem with the first Command control sets(1978). In the 1990s Tyco revamped the system. They bought the rights to 'TCR' from Ideal and were able to lower the voltage to increase the amperes and skirt the child safety laws this gave the customer a 1/2 amp back, for 3 years tyco tried to make a go of the command control revamp called 'TCR' but it never caught on, stalls and derails were always a problem. It is not until you run these systems on custom power supplies that give the racing set the full 2-2.5 amps of power it needs that it really shines.
TCR sets are now relatively collectable items on internet auction sites. Many spares in original packaging, as well as entire sets, individual cars and smaller selections of track are sold to collectors.
Read more about this topic: Total Control Racing
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