Domino Rally
Chain re-ACTION!
Yet another thing the Yanks did bigger and better than us. For the Cream era child hardly a week would pass without Roy Castle introducing another colour-saturated videotape of Record Breaking domino topplers in a Milwaukee aircraft hangar. Therein, jaundiced-looking Spielberg-alikes would spend days setting up elaborate domino displays under hot sodium lamps (usually suffering a cataclysmic set-back when a stray grasshopper knocked over a 10,000-tile set piece overnight). America, Holland, China… you name it, everyone had a crack at the record books.
Just not the UK. What hope of government funding for a would-be domino athlete, eh? You’d just about scrape enough cash together for one wooden, slidey-top box of those Bakelite buggers. The carefully positioned mosaics and pixellated, pixilated patterns (albeit created by teams of Stateside nerds) may have lent the domino an exotic air it would’ve never acquired from years as an old man’s knock-on-the-table game in murky brown pubs. Plus, with only the living room to experiment in, top British domino topplers of the future would be lucky to get a run of ten together, never mind an entire course of dominoes sliding down chutes, setting off rocket launchers and swinging across mini-ravines.
Confidently stepping into this gap in the market came Action GT and its Domino Rally sets (mark 1, mark 2 and, perhaps invevitably, mark 3 – could’ve gone on forever, this). Featuring masses of brightly-coloured tiles1, plus all kinds of gimmicks, stunts and tricks for them to perform (loop-the-loops, elevators, steps, slides and “sunbursts”) Domino Rally also had one extra-special ace up its sleeve. Most of the dominoes were fastened along flat, perfectly-spaced lengths, so resetting them was a quick flip of the wrist away.
However, the unique selling point of domino toppling (not much more than “set them up, knock them down” as the box-blurb reiterated) started to feel a little like too much effort after a while and, as the young player him/herself tumbled inexorably towards adolescence, the plastic set took up final residence in the loft2. Nowadays, if you hear someone say they fancy Dominos, your more than likely expected to get the pizzas in.
Steve
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As inspiring as it is to watch those huge demonstrations of a half-million dominoes falling down in the form of an American flag to a medley of national tunes, the fact remains that it always takes longer to set them all up than it does for them to fall and people to ooh, ah and applaud once it's all done, which strikes me as impressively futile.
As for the rock'n'roll front, Syd Barrett featured a jazzy minor-key tune called "Dominoes" on his eponymous final album as well.
Unfortunately, during the final approach to the end of our Great-Wall-of-China-style construction mission, I became somewhat distracted by 'The Jeremy Kyle Show' and knocked one domino over. Needless to say, the entire construction was rendered flat in the space of mere seconds, without us even seeing the full glory of its motion.
The moral of this sad tale? Always leave small gaps in your domino trail, and fill them in at the end, so the whole lot doesn't go at once if you do suffer a slip. And never, ever watch the Jeremy Kyle Show.