Ricochet
The RC stunt car with enormous inflatable tires that was literally designed to crash. Kenner's Ricochet bounced, rebounded, flipped and kept driving — every collision was the point — and its 1994 TV commercial burned the image into a generation's heads long after the name faded.
Kenner's "Ricochet Radio-Controlled Vehicle," product No. 60290, appears in the 1994 Kenner Toy Fair dealer catalog. The 9.6-volt stunt car packed dual Mabuchi 370 motors driving four massive 5-inch inflatable tires — the kind you'd fill with the included needle. Those oversized, bouncy tires were the entire design: they absorbed impact and let the RC car rebound off obstacles, flip, and keep driving. Crashing wasn't a failure state; it was the gameplay.
Unlike traditional RC racing, Ricochet pitched freestyle stunts and obstacle courses, and the TV commercial — captured airing on Nickelodeon in November 1994 — sold exactly that chaos. Kenner, the Cincinnati toymaker founded by the Steiner brothers in 1946, was by then a Hasbro division (Tonka bought Kenner in 1987, and Hasbro bought Tonka in 1991); collector listings show Tonka-branded releases of Ricochet too, both brands coexisting in the Hasbro portfolio before the Cincinnati operation closed in 2000.
Today Ricochet lives in an odd memory pocket: people describe the bounce and the chaos from the commercial vividly for years before anyone can produce the name. It's the definitive "what was that toy?" toy.
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