Super Solvers: Gizmos & Gadgets!
Race against Morty Maxwell to build faster vehicles by solving science puzzles and outsmarting Cyber Chimps. This Learning Company edutainment staple disguised lessons about simple machines and magnetism as competitive car-building challenges.
The Learning Company released Super Solvers: Gizmos & Gadgets! in 1993 as part of its Super Solvers edutainment series. The premise was a race: the villain Morty Maxwell, the "Master of Mischief," has taken over the Shady Glen Technology Center, and the player must race him to build vehicles faster across three categories—automotive, alternative-energy, and aircraft.
The game's core mechanic wove education and play. Parts were locked behind science puzzles about simple machines, magnets, basic electronics, and forms of energy. Learning the concept unlocked the part; solving it faster unlocked better parts. Morty's "Cyber Chimps" would steal parts mid-race, and you'd distract them by throwing bananas to make them nap—a layer of arcade-style interference wrapped around the educational scaffolding.
The full campaign was 15 challenge races. Win all of them and you beat Morty and the game. Losing a race was possible but never final; you could retry as often as needed. Aimed at kids roughly ages 7 to 12, it lived in the sweet spot of educational games that didn't feel like homework.
Gizmos & Gadgets was a fixture of 90s school computer labs nationwide, where teachers queued classroom rotations to get kids onto the science-games cluster. It also found its way into home libraries alongside other Learning Company titles like Reader Rabbit, becoming synonymous with the era when educational software meant actual challenge and interactivity rather than drill-and-practice.
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